Renascence
by eviclair
Summary: "Mafia Reformation" was never all that high on Tsunami's to-do list, but waking up from a dirt nap to a new twin brother and a world where spewing rainbow fire is the norm tends to shift a girl's priorities around. The megalomaniac with the red eye really isn't helping things. [SI/OC]
1. Cycle

**Renascence**

01: Cycle

* * *

 **"Just act natural.**

 **Just act like all of nature.**

 **Just act like the entire cycle of life and death and change and rebirth."**

-Joseph Fink

* * *

 **{0}**

Death is messy.

Death is upsetting.

Death is, apparently, not as permanent of a state of being as she has believed until now.

She isn't really sure what she'd been expecting. Heaven? Hell? Some kind of afterlife, at least. Oblivion had occurred to her once or twice, she supposes, but it had never struck her as an appealing possibility. Floating endlessly in a void for the rest of eternity is far too anticlimactic to satisfy her. She'll pass, thanks.

Or, y'know, she _would have_.

Given the choice at this exact moment, there is very little she wouldn't have given to be a floating speck of dust in the great empty unknown. Even an eternity of nothingness probably would have been preferable to the disgusting and claustrophobic sensation of being pushed out of a complete stranger's very slimy _uterus_ , but _hey, what the hell,_ it beat eternal damnation.

(She really, really hoped this was not actually eternal damnation.)

When she'd said she'd rather have life after death, this was emphatically _not what she'd meant._

* * *

Her first few weeks of life are, quite literally, hazy and difficult to decipher. Infant eyesight is complete _bullshit_ and all she is able to focus on in between her spontaneous naps is whatever is being held four inches from her face. Sometimes it is a brightly shaped plastic toy; other times it is a slender hand.

She likes the hand, she thinks. It comes with a nice voice that coos at her with words she does not understand. It pats her kindly.

From time to time, she is nose to nose with what she initially assumes to be some kind of extraterrestrial screaming mutant. She has some serious concerns about what kind of world she has been reborn into for several long weeks, because last she checked raisins had neither faces nor the inclination to yell at top volume for hours on end. Finally, her eyesight begins to strengthen and she realizes it's not quite an alien, despite its weird shape and tendency to get damp in odd places. It's just another baby. To be fair, an infant with a head equal in size to her own isn't something she has a lot of experience dealing with. It's face is wrinkled and blotchy and it is _so, so loud._ She wonders if they are twins.

She does not want to be twins with it, she thinks. It smells gross and it's face is strange. She hopes she is cuter.

She can remember dying, from time to time. It wasn't nearly as cool a death as she'd been hoping for. She had lived to… what? Seventeen, eighteen? She had hoped that she would last longer than that.

Her final memories are of a staircase rushing up to meet her face, she thinks. She doesn't remember the view all too well. When she tries to concentrate on her death, all she can usually recall is an overwhelming feeling of _shitshitshitshitshit_ and a half-formed intention to strangle her cat. Said animal had tangled itself around her legs and, in her attempts to not crush his paws under her feet, she'd tumbled face first and presumably broken her neck.

That was so uncool. That was actively the farthest from cool she possibly could've gotten. Her final moments had been spent flailing her arms around frantically trying to tapdance around a pudgy kitty who wanted bellyrubs.

She is kind of glad she does not have to explain that to her dead ancestors in heaven.

She does not know how long it has been since she was born again, but she is beginning to understand that it's better not to think about things like heaven or hell anymore. She's pretty sure she is some kind of glitch in the system because as far as she can recall, she was not born with memories of her past life the first time around. More importantly, dwelling on it for too long has the unfortunate side effect of giving her the headache from the fifth ring of hell.

The headaches make thinking _hard_. Her normal newborn circadian rhythm is absolutely no help whatsoever; she fluctuates between awake and asleep with so little warning that it spooks the shit out of her. She's never been good with handling fear in the first place and now, when she is barely over a foot and a half in length and the whole world is bigger and stronger than her, she has more reason to be terrified than ever. There is a part of her that is totally content to lie still and be touched by all the giant people around her and that part is waging a constant war with the pieces of her that are raising unholy hell.

Her adult brain is so beyond scared sometimes that it's hard to do anything but lie perfectly still and hope that no one sees her. Her infant brain thinks that's bullshit. Her infant brain knows that she is safe here with the big woman and her ugly little raisin of a sibling. It wants to survive, and to survive it must kick and scream until someone notices that it is there. It _refuses_ to be ignored.

It is easier to let her infant brain do the thinking for her, sometimes. The big woman seems happier when she does. She figures it might be a little weird to have one child that shrieks at uncomfortable volumes at most hours of the day and one that barely makes a peep until it's time for a diaper change, but the big woman manages.

She makes a concentrated effort not to slip through the cracks in her own head, but everything is just... it is _so much_. There is something incredibly soothing about the isolation and empty silence inside her head while her body is overloading. It is so hard to pull herself away from it, but she knows that making it a habit is going to be dangerous in the long run. It is one thing to let instinct take over when she is an infant, but what happens when she is older? When she has a life? When she has a job? She will not be able to afford going dead to the world then. She knows that she should nip this in the bud.

Unfortunately, it is a lot easier said than done.

In between her naps and her occasional blackouts, she begins to notice patterns in speech. Two words pop up with increasing frequency, and after a while she is able to decipher their meaning.

Her name is Tsunami. The raisin's name is Tsunayoshi. It becomes strange to hear one without the other.

Siblings are new. She hasn't decided if she likes it yet.

* * *

There is something wrong with her eyes.

Aesthetically, she means. She is still small enough that her vision isn't perfect, but she wore glasses once upon a time and she knows what it looks like when your vision is fucked. This is not that.

She and Tsunayoshi are big enough to be taken out of the house with their… with the woman who birthed them now. They are packed in a double seated stroller with a sunroof and Tsunami is sure they make an adorable sight. People stop on the street to waggle their fingers at them and make funny faces. It makes her deeply uncomfortable. She feels watched all the time and the only thing she can bring herself to do is stare at them solemnly and hope her lack of reaction persuades them to stop sticking their tongues out like fucking idiots.

Every single one of them stares back.

She locks gazes with complete strangers for long stretches of time and she is always the first to break. There is nervous energy buzzing in her limbs and her heart is in her throat, but she can't make it stop. She wants nothing more than to blank out and retreat back inside of herself, but she reminds herself that there is so much _world_ around her now that she knows nothing about. Blacking out to let her unappreciative baby hindbrain take over is a waste.

It is hard to convince herself of that when people who know nothing about her look at her as though she is something abnormal and unsettling.

She is, but they do not know that. They _can't_ know that.

Tsunayoshi is a godsend in these moments. He seems to be about as uncomfortable with the attention as Tsunami is, but unlike her, he has no understanding of the word 'self-control' and wears his emotions on his sleeves. Her sleeves, to be specific. Its super fucking nasty and she wishes he would find a better victim.

He cries every time. As the nearest warm body and functional meatshield, it becomes her solemn duty to be grabbed and tugged around by Tsunayoshi as he tries to yank her from her seatbelt and hug her like she is a stuffed toy. The result is all kinds of gross child fluid smeared all over her shirt and while it is absolutely one of the most disgusting sensations she has encountered (sans birth and the ongoing potty-training struggle), the noisy tears succeed in scaring off the gawkers nine times out of ten.

Tsunami does not figure out what the problem is until she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror during bath time. She and Tsunayoshi are bathed together in the bathroom sink, which is super weird to experience but also efficient, she supposes. There is a full size tub _right there_ , but she figures that the two of them are maybe a little too small still for that to be safe. She likes the sink better for now, anyways. It allows her to get close enough to the bathroom mirror to get a full, clear look at her new body.

It is the first time she has seen herself.

She is pleased to note that she is fucking adorable.

Her cheeks are full and soft with baby fat and colored with a high flush from the steam of the bath. Her hair hasn't really grown in yet, but what little she has is the same honey brown as her brother's. Her mouth is cute and pink and even though this body is so, _so_ radically different from what she is used to…

She kind of likes it?

Then she sees her eyes and wonders how on earth they were not the first thing she noticed.

' _What the actual fuck is this,'_ she thinks initially, bewildered. Tsunayoshi's eyes are the same sweet shade of brown as his hair, similar to his mother's. Brown eyes were dominant, weren't they? If one of her genetic donors had brown eyes, then odds were that she would have them too.

The blazing neon orange eyes in the mirror takes those odds and slam dunks them into the fucking garbage disposal. Tsunami shifts a little closer to the mirror and- holy mother of _shit_ , no, literally what the fuck, this was not _normal._

Tsunami used to be a cat owner. She is intimately familiar with all the weird, creepy bullshit that cat eyes do when exposed to flash or when seen at the right angle in near-darkness.

There is absolutely no conceivable reason why her pupils should be lighting up bright fucking yellow like a cat's in the night.

She shifts back and forth slightly, watching with horrified fascination as her pupils switch from black to floodlight and back again depending on the angle she tilts her head. No fucking wonder people were staring, this was weird as _hell_.

They remind her of something she'd seen in an anime once. The main character could switch into knockoff super saiyan mode and fly around shitting fire out of his mittens or something bizarre like that? His eyes would change colors and he would get super serious and competent. It had been one of the weirder shows she'd seen. Her point is, when he powered up his super special giant flamethrower thing, parts of his eye would light up like someone lit a literal fire behind them. She always thought it was the coolest shit.

Now it is _on her face_ and she is significantly less enthralled. Tsunami hates being stared at. She hates the attention, she hates the pressure, she hates being _seen_. With eyes like this, there isn't a chance in hell she is ever going to be unnoticeable ever again. The realization fills her with an equal mix of dread and intrigue.

She has never stood out before.

She is not sure that she wants to.

* * *

 **/muffled screaming**

 **I am alive!** **This is probably going to be the shortest chapter I post.**

 **Renascence isn't quite so much a rewrite of Story of an Undead Otaku as it is me picking up my protagonist and transplanting her into different story with the same setting. Some scenes may seem familiar to a few of you, but for the most part this is brand new stuff and I hope and pray to dear god that its at least a little bit better written than SOAUO. Its only been** ** _three years_** **.**

 **I also want to go right ahead and say that I'm playing this shit fast and loose. I am writing this because writing this makes me happy. If at any point in the future you have complaints about the direction I am taking this story, you are all highly encouraged to just stop reading it because I'm ****doing what _I_ want and literally nothing else** **.**

 **Thanks to HeirofChairs for putting up with like nine months of whining about this stupid thing and also for proofreading it for me at 5 in the morning. You're like, the best.**

 **Review at your own leisure and thank you for reading!**


	2. Family

02: Family

* * *

 **{2}**

Late one night while Tsunayoshi snuffles into his pillow, Tsunami stares at the ceiling and thinks of parents.

(It's not like she has anything better to do- her favorite part of sleep is dreaming and she hasn't done that since she died.)

She'd had parents, once. A mom and a dad and an asshole of a cat.

Tsunami has parents now, too, but acknowledging that seems like some kind of betrayal against what she's left behind. Who had found her body, she wonders? Was there blood? Trying to imagine what her mother's reaction must have been like makes her breath catch in her throat and something like homesickness settle low in her chest.

The woman who takes care of her now is, if those friendly old women across the street can be believed, named Nana, and she is the polar opposite of the mother that she remembers. Nana is gentle. Her hair is long and dark and she speaks softly, filling the whole house with a quiet kind of cheer. Her mother from Before had been a blonde force of nature who believed very strongly in the idea of 'tough love'. If she closes her eyes and concentrates, Tsunami thinks she can still feel the sting of knuckles grinding affectionately into her hair. Loud, deep laughter echoes in her ears- her father was never any help when her mother was like this and only ever laughed like they were prime entertainment. She misses him.

In this life, Tsunami's father is…

…?

...Hold the _fuck_ up.

Tsunami sits ramrod straight in the tiny bed she shares with her brother so fast her head spins. There is red-hot righteous indignation brewing in her stomach, bright and furious. She racks her brain for memories of any kind of man that could maybe be her father, but she comes up blank. She cannot recall a single instance of masculine laughter or warm hands. She can't think of _any_ caretakers who aren't Nana, actually, which rules out the possibility of her father really just being another mother. Hell, she's never even met Nana's family members. The woman has been well and truly alone for as long as Tsunami has known her.

Her own mommy issues aside, Nana is a ridiculously sweet woman. Even if Tsunami's limited language skills can only help her decipher about half of what Nana says, she can tell that the older woman genuinely loves her twins with all her heart. She tries her best to look after them both and provides a warm and loving environment that even skittish Tsunami has grown to feel safe in. Even if Tsunami can't quite clear the "mom" hurdle, she's growing very fond of her caretaker.

And some gaping _shithole_ had up and ditched her.

Thoroughly pissed off and feeling more than a little childish, Tsunami throws her body back into the soft mattress with a huff. Tsunayoshi's breathing stutters for a moment as the force jostles him awake, but in true child fashion he just rolls over and falls right back to sleep. Tsunami is too busy focusing every ounce of her irritation into the open air- if she concentrates hard enough, maybe she can telepathically explode her sperm donor's brain?- to notice or be apologetic.

What a douchebag. If she ever meets him, she's going to kick him in the balls.

* * *

Ten thousand miles away, Sawada Iemitsu sneezes. There's some kind of pressure behind his eyes that feels different than the usual work-related headache. He hopes he is not getting sick.

* * *

To absolutely no one's shock or surprise, Tsunami does not understand the first thing about toddlers. This is okay, because toddlers do not seem to give a shit.

It is stressing her out.

For one thing, she's supposed to be playing the part of a guileless two year old who is absolutely _not_ bored to fucking tears with her brightly-colored plastic toys or her pathetically short arms or her fuzzy pink onesie. Well, alright, she's getting kind of attached to that last one. Tsunami looks cute as heck with her tiny feet covered up by soft pastel fuzz and she refuses to be ashamed of it. The matching headband with the big, floppy bow is just the icing on the frilly pink cake and she loves it. Unfortunately for everyone around her, Tsunami cannot be pacified by her own adorable feetsies forever.

She's been trying hard to cut down on her Slips. Consequently, falling back on the instinctual part of her brain that knows how to act like an actual kid is out of the question. She learns to fake it.

Bullshitting childlike behavior comes easier when she is working off a template, so she watches her brother closely and mimics what he does. When Tsunayoshi grows tired of playing with his action figures or his Legos, Tsunami stops playing with them as well. Nana tries to coax her into playing dress-up and make-believe with her dolls, but for the most part Tsunami doesn't pay them much mind. They are fun to manipulate from time-to-time in a nostalgic sort of way (which trips her up because she is having flashbacks to her early childhood while she is _in_ her early childhood), but it is much easier to keep an eye on Tsunayoshi when she does not have to split her attention between him and the questionable fashion choices of a foot-tall plastic doll.

Also, she had never actually played with Gundams before and they are, like, _super_ fucking cool. Gundams are the highlight of her day.

Tsunayoshi seems glad to have the company, usually. Half the time she isn't really sure what he's babbling to her, but since Nana doesn't seem to know either she figures it's probably par for the course. Her grasp on the Japanese language is certainly better than it was even four weeks ago, but it is still far from perfect. Or, uh, _passable_. Tsunami may be getting a lot better with her articulation and verb tenses, but flubbing every third word is embarrassing and frustrating so most of the time she just stays quiet. There will be time to chatter when the language isn't quite so foreign to her.

Because he seems to be literally incapable of shutting up, Tsunayoshi is unintentionally her greatest helper in this endeavor. Although his grammar is worse than hers is, he's such a bouncy little ray of sunshine that it's cute instead of weird. He's finally grown out of his creepy little infant raisin face and now his cheeks are just a squishy and soft as hers are.

His puppy eyes are _lethal_ and she is _weak_.

"'n then the hero flewed in like whoosh and he, he hit the bad guy in the FACE!" Here, Tsunayoshi pauses and looks at her expectantly, wooden log frozen in what she assumes is a battle position. Her own wooden block is differently shaped and is consequently playing the villain that the hero is engaged in life-or-shadowrealm combat with. Tsunami isn't sure why they couldn't have played this with the conveniently humanoid action figures lying, like, right there, but she isn't about to argue pretend-fight logic with a two-year-old. Instead, she clears her throat and adopts her best menacing villain voice.

"AUGH," she bellows. This seems to be enough for Tsunayoshi. She appreciates that.

"The bad guy falls over! The crowd goes wild! It's another home run for Captain Justice!" Tsunayoshi throws his arms in the air and teeters onto his back, giggling madly. Tsunami, who lost the plot to the epic block smackdown ten minutes ago when Captain Justice-who was named just now, on the spot-had to fly through an active volcano to save the dragon-warrior princess block (Tsunami's idea) so she could return to her kingdom and eat dinner, feels vaguely charmed but mostly relieved that she is allowed to stop holding her villain block over her head. Apparently, that is the only way to correctly hold a block in flight. Who knew.

Tsunayoshi's giggle train is nigh impossible to stop once it starts going. He rolls over in a fit before scrambling to his feet, crowing his excitement to the world with rosy cheeks and horrendously messy hair. Tsunami giggles a little bit along with him because he's _super fucking cute_ and his little onesie is so rumpled that he has to pause to straighten it back out so that he can move right. She gets up too, abandoning her blocks in favor of figuring out where he is running off to and whether or not she should go run off there after him.

It should chafe at her pride, probably, that she spends most of her time playing following-the-leader with a kid just barely out of diapers. It's a good thing she doesn't have too much of that left in her body. Nana believed in _breastfeeding_.

She likes boobs as much as the next person, but not like that. Never, ever like that, not now and maybe never again.

"Mama, mama, I-won-I-won-I-won-I-won!" He shrieks, bursting into the kitchen where Nana is stirring a pot of something that smells delicious. He wraps his arms around her leg and shimmies up her thigh like some kind of overexcited koala, chattering gleefully about Captain Justice's 'totally awesome' superpowers and his incredible take-down of the dastardly villain. It sounds about twenty times more exciting in his retelling than it actually was.

Tsunami follows after him at a more sedate pace and mimics his clinging, tugging a fistful of Nana's loose pants close to her chest. Tsunayoshi is an energetic force of nature and that is all well and good, but she doesn't quite have the same boundless enthusiasm for cuddles. Also, forcing poor Nana to deal with more than just the one hyperactive toddler on her own is kind of a dick move.

Nana listens to Tsunayoshi's story with rapt attention and shows appropriate shock and horror when he tells her about the vicious block-eating monsters Captain Justice had to fight off, only to join him in his victorious cheering when he reveals that the hero beat them all up without breaking a sweat. Never once does her stirring rhythm so much as stutter, which is astonishing considering how much Tsunayoshi is moving around on her hip.

"'Nami was the bad guy this time! She made a really cool noise when I fighted her, like BWUGH, and then I beat her and won 'nd, and, um…" Tsunayoshi trails off, realizing that he has finally run out of story to tell. He looks at her imploringly. She, having absolutely _no_ idea what he's wanting her to say, redirects the conversation to the most pressing topic on her mind.

"...When's food, Mama?" She asks, getting as high up on her toes as she can to try to take a peek into the pot that Nana is so artfully mixing. She's about three feet too short to actually see anything but her own slightly warped reflection in the stainless steel.

She, too, is super fucking cute, she notes with satisfaction. Her eyes aren't quite as wide and round as her brothers and they are a little on the unsettling side, but her cheeks are squishy and plump. Her hair is the same warm shade as her brothers but, unlike his, it actually observes the laws of gravity and lies flat. Too flat, actually- she'd gotten nice and used to having wavy hair Before and the ease with which Nana could get a brush through her hair now makes her feel uncomfortable. It has a nice shine to it, at least.

She really would not mind being this adorable forever, if she's honest. It is a refreshing change from what she originally lived with, which were lanky teenage limbs that just wouldn't stop growing and a rather unfortunate tendency to break out in acne when the weather changed.

"'When will dinner be ready', Tsu-chan," Nana corrects gently. Tsunami takes a moment to roll the words over in her mouth and parrots them back obediently. The only reason she puts up with Nana nitpicking her own language skills while Tsunayoshi gets off scot-free is because she loves and respects the woman. Also, Tsunayoshi flat out refuses to listen to reason half the time.

"When will dinner be ready, Mama?"

"Dinner!" Tsunayoshi chimes in hopefully, trying to scramble even further up Nana's side to do what Tsunami cannot and catch a glimpse of whatever feast his mother is brewing within. In one fluid motion, Nana scoops Tsunayoshi up to place him in a steadier position higher on her hip and then bounces him all the way back down until his feet are firmly back on the ground. He whines and tries in earnest to scramble back up, but all Nana has to do is put a finger on his nose and he freezes, crossing his eyes to try and figure out what she is doing.

Tsunami takes mental notes.

"Just a few more minutes, you two. But, you know…" Nana hums thoughtfully, tapping her chin and glancing down at them with a wicked gleam in her eyes. "Dirty kids don't get dinner. You better hurry and wash your hands or else you won't be able to have any!"

Mortally offended at the idea of _no dinner, oh shit_ , Tsunayoshi takes off like a shot towards the bathroom. Whatever is in that pot smells amazing and Tsunami will be damned if she lets her grubby little brother get his paws on it first. She is faster than he is when motivated and within seconds they are racing neck and neck down the hallway towards the stairs.

Their proximity turns out to be a good thing when gravity strikes. Tsunayoshi makes it all of four feet on the carpet before he trips over his own legs and spins out sideways into a wild tumble. Luckily, Tsunami is in the perfect position to cushion his fall and he faceplants into her hip and sends the both of them crashing to the floor. Her face squishes into Tsunayoshi's shoulder as her entire body skids out into a wide arc along the carpet, hecking _ow_. If she doesn't have rug burn all up her side its going to be a goddamn miracle.

Tsunami lies dazed and spread eagle on the ground. There is half a two-year-old sprawled over her torso and a sharp knee digging into her ribcage like its trying to shank her to second death.

She contemplates movement.

' _Nah_ ,' she decides. Her head may be aching and about half an inch from the wall, but she's really rocking this whole "lie on the floor perfectly motionless" thing she's got going on and isn't really all that motivated to get up.

Tsunayoshi, with his face smooshed into the carpet, is not quite so content. Eerily silent, he digs her knee even deeper into her ribcage (she releases a noise somewhere between a wheeze and a sob) and pulls himself upright. He slips off of her without a single noise, which is unusual enough that she raises her head to get a look at his face.

There's a big red spot on his forehead from where it bumped into the floor and, as Tsunami watches, he tentatively raises his hands to poke at it.

Still not a peep.

It feels like the calm before the storm. She's starting to freak out a little bit.

"...Are you oka-?" Tsunami's question is strangled by a squeak of panic as the dam finally breaks and Tsunayoshi begins to sniffle, pawing at his head at looking her with a trembling lip and eyes like the world has just ended.

' _Fuck fuck fuck fuckity fuckfuckfuck_ ,' Tsunami screeches internally and her terror must be showing on her face because Tsunayoshi's expression crumples. His big brown eyes get wet and shiny and he opens his mouth to take in a huge gulp of air and oh gosh, oh no, Tsunami knows exactly what that means, shit shit shit shit _shit-_

Children are an unknown entity and completely beyond her skills as a functioning human being. Tsunami has no fucking idea what to do other than stand up and run screaming, but for whatever reason that strikes her as kind of a dick move. It's a fight or flight situation but she can't run and punching a two year old in the face seems counterproductive somehow, so she does the first thing that comes to mind and-

she boops him on the nose.

Tsunayoshi stills, caught in the middle of his massive inhale. His watery eyes cross to stare at her finger like he cannot believe that it's really there, his hands still hovering over his own forehead. Tsunami absolutely did not plan this far ahead and she is feeling the opposite of reassured by his silence. What now? Would he just start screaming if she stopped touching his nose? Is this his off button?

They sit frozen for several seconds, neither one knowing quite how to proceed. With no small amount of hesitation, Tsunayoshi uncrosses his eyes and stares at her with big blank owl eyes.

"...You're okay," she states slowly and then inches her finger off his nose like he will break if she moves too fast. To her surprise and relief, the tears and screams do not resume.

She feels like she has just unearthed a great and powerful secret.

Tsunayoshi brings his hands back down to his sides and keeps staring at her like he's completely checked out of planet earth. She's about to go get Nana because _oh no_ , maybe he really is concussed, when he bursts into maniacal giggles out of _fuckshit nowhere_ and scrambles back up to his feet like nothing had happened.

"You're so weird, nee-chan," he laughs, patting her on the head magnanimously before turning on a dime and scampering down the rest of the hallway and up the stairs on all fours. She stares after him, poleaxed.

Just… what.

Literally, just what in the actual fuck.

The upstairs bathroom door opens.

She… she is not weird. He's weird! He was about to start raising hell two seconds ago and now he is laughing and also _gone_ , how did that make her the weird one? Tsunami is not equipped for this. Toddlers are fucking strange as hell and she is so far beyond out of her element.

The sink turns on.

...That little shit is _winning the race,_ goddammit all.

"I'm not _weird!_ " Tsunami yelps and scurries up the staircase after him, fully intent on washing her hands and then shoving her wet fingers down his neck in retribution.

She has never had a little brother before, Tsunami thinks. It is different from accepting a new mother or a new body or a new life simply because she has no basis for comparison. Siblings are new, uncharted territory. Even if she has fuck-all idea of what she's doing, she can't deny that she kind of likes figuring it out.

* * *

 **{3}**

When she and Tsuna ('Tsunayoshi' was such a pain in the ass to say all the time, honestly) are three, they meet their father. And their grandfather. And their grandfather's bodyguards.

It does not go well.

When the large blonde man bursts in through the front door with a bouquet of rose in his hands and a love song on his lips, Tsunami startles so badly that she trips and falls directly on her face in the middle of tag with Tsuna. He's close enough behind her that he stumbles hard on over her body and spends an almost impressive amount of time tripping and catching himself and tripping again. When he finally comes to a stop he is laid out flat on the floor, looking vaguely concussed. This isn't really anything new to Tsunami because lord knows that boy was a disaster with feet but the strange man in her house? Unknown element.

Tsunami scrambles back up to her feet and hauls Tsuna behind the sitting room table by his armpits because what the _fuck_. She's fairly certain Nana keeps the front door locked tight and this… this screaming blonde goliath just broke in like there hadn't even been anything in his way. Was this a home invasion? Were they being robbed? What the fuck was she supposed to do during a robbery?

Between the sudden shock that had probably just taken years off her life and the vaguely lyrical harpy screams that still have not stopped, Tsunami is more than a little rattled. Her heart beating too fast in her chest and she is frozen in place. There are procedures for this, she knows that she's supposed to do something if someone breaks into her house but she can't think and everything is so loud and so fast and oh, oh shit, is she having a heart attack? _Can toddlers have heart attacks?_ Her name is Tsunami and she is about to die for the second time in three years, fucking _fantastic._

For just a moment, she lets herself Slip.

* * *

It is quiet inside her head. She thinks there may be objects around her, but the dim light in the corner isn't strong enough for her to make them out clearly. Her tiny glow in the distance can hardly even be called a 'glow' in the first place, anyways. It reminds her of a lightbulb someone's just turned off- its producing a light, sure, but it's so soft that it might as well just be an afterimage. She's tried to walk over and touch it a few times before, but after after a certain point she just crashes face-first into some kind of barrier and has to either turn back or wake up.

She should really wake up.

Something important is happening on the Outside and she needs to be around to react to it.

...She isn't sure she cares. Slipping feels a lot like being on heavy sedatives and it's hard to remember why she was so afraid just seconds before. Tsunami has the distance and emotional clarity now to realize that she has probably just experienced a panic attack.

She never realized quite how much those felt like dying.

She does not want to wake up.

She does it anyways.

* * *

Tsunami blinks twice and the world returns. It hits her like a slap in the face and she has to take a second to just breathe and re-calibrate. Her heart is still working overtime and she is so, _so_ annoyed with herself for blanking out. Her gut is clenching with nausea, but she forces herself to focus through it.

The death warbles have stopped. Instead, Nana's laughter rings out through the house, bright and clear. Someone else is laughing with her, someone with a deep and deafening voice that reminds her of her father's except no, not at all. Her father's laugh was warm like sunshine or soup on a cold day, but this? This is just fucking obnoxious.

Tsunayoshi is upright and tugging on their joined hands, impatient to get out of her grip (' _when did I grab his hand, I don't remember doing that, I hate Slipping'_ ) and see what is happening in the next room over. She allows herself to be dragged out of their hiding spot and what she sees through the doorframe immediately sets her back on edge.

The blonde man has Nana in a massive bear hug and they are twirling circles in the middle of the entrance hall. They both seem so absolutely ecstatic to see each other that it is jarring to her. The man is exactly as huge as she had initially thought him to be and his pale hair is cut professionally short. In contrast to his spiffy haircut, the rest of him is kind of scruffy and mussed up. His white wifebeater is slightly stained in some unidentified substance- grease or blood, mechanic or home-invading murderer- and his beard is more like scruff than anything else. When he opens his eyes to look at the two kids peering out from the doorway, his eyes are honey brown and elated.

They are the same shade as Tsuna's, she realizes. Is this… could this be their father? It would explain the hugging and the roses and the general lack of concern from anyone but her. Well, her and Tsuna.

"Mama?" Her brother tries cautiously, squeezing Tsunami's hand tightly. For being such a noisy kid, Tsuna gets awfully quiet around strangers nowadays. Tsunami really hopes she isn't rubbing off on him. The blonde in the doorway slowly lowers Nana to her feet and she turns to them, smile wider than Tsunami has ever seen it.

"Tsu-kun, Tsu-chan, come say hi to your Papa!"

The man kneels and opens his arms wide, grinning from ear to ear. Tsunami's grip spasms for a moment. Tsuna jumps a little and stares between her and the beaming blonde man with trepidation. When he ducks behind her instead of running towards his biological father for a hug, she is filled with a vicious sense of smug satisfaction and affectionate pride. Clearly, Tsuna is aware of stranger danger.

A stranger is all this man is. She glares at him with as much vitriol as she is capable of mustering and resists the urge to do something drastic like bare her teeth or punch him in the nose. It doesn't matter how warmly Nana is greeting him, he is a _stranger_ to them.

He has not so much as visited them since their birth three years ago. He has left Nana on her own to raise twins. Nana clearly does not give a shit about any of this, but Tsunami isn't about to let some no-show fuckwad anywhere near her or Tsuna's person before she sees some fucking _grovelling_.

She decides to call him Jackass.

The only thing stopping her from marching up to Jackass right now and smashing her tiny child foot directly into his junk multiple times is her baby brother's small hand gripping hers solidly and the weight of his body pressing against her back. The moment Tsuna lets up, she is going to rush this stupid old man with all the power in her toddler body and _kick his ass_.

He must be able to read her thoughts on her face because his smile falters for a moment. To her alarm, it comes back twice as strong barely a second later before he moves forward to close the gap between them. She tries to reel back but there is a child behind her, shit, it's too late to dodge, maybe she can kick him in the face-?

Before she can make her thoughts a bloody reality, Jackass has scooped both her and Tsuna up in one fell swoop. Toddlers are small but they aren't _that_ small, and if she weren't so busy cursing his name to hell and back she might've been impressed. Her legs are pinned at too awkward of an angle to do anything more than shuffle feebly and she hates it, she hates it so fucking _much_. She's forced to release Tsuna's hand and grab two fistfuls of Jackass's shirt else she tip sideways and fall what feels like twenty feet to the ground.

She swallows hard. Heights do not bother her quite so much as the idea of _falling_ from them does.

"Mama," Tsuna squeaks, clearly as alarmed at the sudden shift in vantage as she is. Nana laughs good-naturedly and reaches up to extract him from Jackass's grip, leaving each parent to carry one twin each. It would be the perfect moment for a picture if Tsunami wasn't so sure she looked like she was about to puke. She certainly felt the part. In the safe, familiar arms of his mother, Tsuna relaxes and looks up at the tall blonde man with open curiosity.

"There's someone else I want you two to meet," Jackass whispers conspiratorially. Tsuna's mouth opens into a perfect 'O' and he begins to look reluctantly excited for the surprise. He's a traitor to the cause, but Tsunami will forgive him because he is too young to know any better. She, on the other hand, has had her fill of meeting new people for the next four years, give or take. She struggles a little in Jackass's grip to let him know she wants to get down _now_ , but all that does is make her feel like she's about to tumble out of his arms and she quickly gives it up.

She is going to have to use her words, isn't she. Eurgh.

"I want down," she hisses. "...please," she tacks on as an afterthought. Adults liked polite shit, right? She is super cute, there's no reason why he shouldn't give her what she wants.

Jackass laughs straight from his belly and it's like being part of a small earthquake. Everything about this man is overpowered and no, she takes it back, Nana is _clearly_ flourishing on her own, none of them needed this guy in the picture anymore. She hopes he will leave quickly.

"Aw, so soon? But you haven't even been in the best spot yet!" Tsuna lets out a short noise of alarm, then Jackass's shirt is being wrenched from her hands. She swallows a shriek as she is lifted up and up and _up_. Her only supports are the hands under her arms and the ground is getting farther and farther away and this is it, this is how she dies again, she is going to fall and be a little child-sized smear on the floor oh god oh _god she is going to murder this son of a bitch-_

she Slips-

* * *

(she can see something bright, brighter than anything she's ever seen in her slipspace)

* * *

-and wrenches herself right back out again. She is barely gone for a second but that is apparently long enough for Jackass to finish settling her so that she is perched on his neck. Her legs are dangling limply over his shoulders and she folds them immediately- partly to make sure she cannot fall and partly to try and choke the ever loving _fuck_ out of this abrasive shitwad.

'I want down' does not mean 'put me even higher, you fucking mountain'. She fists her hands more tightly than necessary in his hair and hangs on for dear life, seething.

Jackass is oddly still for a moment and she hopes it's because there is a toddler on his neck trying to kill him and he's feeling some kind of regret or apology. Her hopes are dashed when he just laughs once more-her whole body shakes with it-and gently loosens her deadlocked legs like they are toothpicks. Tsunami does not appreciate the demonstration of strength and tightens her grip in his hair.

"Let's go meet your grandfather," Nana suggests, bouncing Tsuna on her hip slightly in her excitement. Excitement happens to be the _exact opposite_ of the emotion Tsunami is feeling at the moment. Tsuna, at least, looks intrigued and put up no fuss as the two adults carry them into the backyard.

There is a mustache'd old man in a some frankly hideous tourist clothes sitting primly in one of their lawn chairs. From her ridiculously high vantage point, Tsunami can spy three other men in suits around the perimeter of her house, standing tall and alert.

The _fuck_.

Nana gently settles Tsuna back to his feet and Tsunami braces herself for similar treatment. Jackass reaches up and grip her firmly under the arms again and she squeezes her eyes shut, stiff as a board as he pulls up and swings her through the air. She refuses to unfreeze or even open her eyes until she is completely sure that her feet are firmly on the ground.

As soon as her feet are back on the porch, Tsuna's tiny hand wraps around her clenched fist and pries it apart so he can wiggle his fingers between her own. It helps ground her in a different sense and she pulls in a deep, calming breath. If he ever tries that again she is going to shove her fingers in his eyesockets, propriety be damned.

Tsunami turns to look at her… grandfather? Is that what Nana had said? She wonders if he is Nana's father or if they are related through the less palatable party. She really, really hopes he is Nana's father.

He leans over in his chair so that he is closer to eye-level with she and her twin. His mustache is extremely bushy close-up, she notes. Tsuna takes a half-step behind her to hide again and she lets him, shifting slightly so that she blocks more of him from view. It's not very effective. Tsuna's spikey cloud of brown hair is too large and distinctive to fit entirely behind her back, but she tries her best anyways.

The old man pulls back by inches, eyebrows flinching upwards. Tsunami is confused for a moment before she remembers her _bright fucking orange eyes_ with the pupils that glowed at certain angles. She tilts her head down and looks away because really, there's no need for her to give an old man a heart attack so soon after meeting him.

"Introduce yourselves," Nana prompts kindly, patting Tsuna's floof of hair affectionately. He peers over Tsunami's shoulder, squeezing her hand out of sheer nervousness.

"...M-my name's… um, Tsunayoshi. Y-you can… um, you can…" Tsuna stutters, growing more and more flustered by the second as his words get stuck in his throat. His palms are kind of gross and sweaty as he squeezes her hand once, twice, three more times in panic.

"You can call him Tsuna," Tsunami interjects. Her shoulders square. A wave of protectiveness is surging through her and she squeezes his hand right back, solid and firm. She feels for him. The crushing press of anxiety against her lungs is a feeling she's become intimately familiar with over the past few minutes ( _years_ ) and it fucking blows.

"And what's your name, little princess?" The old man's voice is rough, but it's also filled with warmth. His eyes are dark, she notes, darker than Tsuna's or even Nana's. There is something twinkling in them that Jackass's didn't quite have and she finds herself liking him more and more. He is Nana's father, she is sure of it.

"Tsunami," she replies, a little hesitant. He is leaning closer, looking at her eyes with focus that surprises her with its intensity. He looks like… he looks like he is searching for something. She shifts, uncomfortable but also unwilling to break character in front of her brother.

"Tsunami-chan," he hums. His scrutinizing gaze breaks into a wide, genial smile and she feels herself relax bit by bit. "You have very pretty eyes, Tsunami-chan."

Oh. Oh, no.

Punching her directly in the eye socket might actually have had less of an effect. Blood is rushing to her face so fast that she gets dizzy and her cheeks feel so hot that she is half-convinced that someone has just straight turned up the sun. Tsuna is giggling at her, the traitor, and oh lord is Nana squealing, she's _squealing_. This is simultaneously the absolutely worst and the best, best, _best_ thing that's happened to Tsunami in a long time.

"Thankyouverymuch!" Tsunami tries for grateful and humbled but only manages some kind of quiet nasal scream that does not sound composed at all. She bites the inside of her cheek immediately after and curses her tiny, adorable voice to hell and back. She is so red in the face that she is glowing as bright as her eyes, she can fucking feel it.

Unwelcome comments about how 'unique' she was are common to her now. The people at the supermarket who stop Nana to coo at she and Tsuna mostly just cough awkwardly at her pupils and change the subject. Even Nana chooses to just avoid mentioning them. No one has _ever_ complimented her eyes before.

It shouldn't be a big deal. This is such bullshit, she is so weak to flattery. Forgetting about her intentions to be Tsuna's unshakeable shield, Tsunami ducks her head and tries valiantly to control her furious blushing.

She fucking loves this old guy, he is one-hundred percent her new favorite person on the planet.

Sudden rush of affection aside, she is quite literally redder than a fucking stoplight and she is possessed by the need to run away and scream quietly in a corner until she calms the hell down. She does so abruptly, yanking Tsuna along behind her into the backyard. He stumbles a little bit, too caught up in his guffaws to concentrate on coordination. Its pretty rude to just up and leave the old guy like that, if Tsunami's honest, but she can't find the will to give a shit.

She is three, she chants internally. She is allowed to be both easily flustered and rude as hell.

She powerwalks a little faster.

* * *

When she calms down enough to look people in the eye again, her first order of business is to unleash unholy retribution on Tsuna for laughing at her in her time of peril. He shrieks with glee as he successfully evades her first lunge, but she is quick to catch up and lock him into an affectionate noogie. His unruly hair cushions him from most of the sting, but he wails dramatically anyways just to be a brat. It is equal parts irritating and endearing.

"Nee- _chan_ ," Tsuna whines, stretching her title out about four syllables longer than it really needs to be. His tiny fists papping against her arm do nothing to dissuade her from her thirst for vengeance.

"You laughed at me!"

He is, in fact, laughing at her right now.

"Y-your face," he wheezes out between his giggles. "You look like a big t'mato!"

"I DO NOT," she whisper-yells so hard that her voice cracks right in the middle and she flushes again in mortification. Tsuna goes boneless with the force of his giggles and slips out of her grip to puddle on the grass like he is more slime than boy. The temptation to sit on top of him until her dominance is re-established is almost too strong to ignore, but the muffled tittering of the adults by the backdoor reminds her that she has an audience.

She is a mature adult with mature adult reactions to things, goddammit. Just because her justified adult rage happens to look fucking adorable on a three year old girl does not mean she will stand for being made spectacle of.

Tsunami does the mature adult thing and walks away with her nose in the air. Her face is not bright red, she is just… it's just a healthy glow. It's fine and totally un-funny.

The neighbor's Chihuahua is sniffing around the back gate as usual, so she takes the opportunity for what it is. She strides towards it like petting the dog had been her intention all along instead of that nice patch of grass she was originally aiming to go sulk- to go _investigate_ in.

It has a collar on and it is even tinier than she is. It would be a criminal act not to go scratch behind its ears, clearly.

The dog's internal affection radar is apparently in perfect working order because the minute she considers petting it, it is wiggling through the gate bars to trot towards her with a cute little puppy grin. She runs her hands over it's fur with more than a little syrupy cooing. The dog's little tongue pokes out as it pants happily and that's it, she is sold. It is so soft and cute and it is hers now, she is adopting it into her home.

Lord alive, does she fucking love dogs. She used to be a cat person, sure, but it is amazing how being indirectly murdered by a cat will open your eyes to the wonders of puppies. Plus, dogs actually loved you back. Cats just puked on the things you loved and sat in inconvenient places.

"Tsuna, look!" Tsunami calls, because the only thing better than petting a dog is alerting other people that there is a dog nearby to pet. Tsuna, still laying in the grass where she left him, does not look nearly as excited at the prospect of doggies as she does. This is completely unacceptable.

She scoops the Chihuahua up in her arms and totters towards her brother. The arrangement is a little precarious because as small as the dog is, Tsunami is still just a little kid and not all that much bigger than it. Tsuna begins to look a little pale as she approaches on unsteady feet. She stops about three feet away from him and lets the wiggling Chihuahua down so it can snuffle its nose at Tsuna and open his eyes to the joys of teeny dog muzzles. She is, perhaps, a bit over-excited about introducing her baby brother to foreign animals, but cute things have always been a chink in her armor. Case in point, her precious baby brother who she loves very much. His puffy cheeks are like _kryptonite._

"Say hi to the puppy," she urges. Tsuna shuffles backwards inch by inch with wide eyes. The dog is clearly unhappy with the total lack of petting happening right now and bounds up to her little brother to lick him in the face with gleeful abandon. Tsunami really hopes Nana has a camera out right now because it is fucking adorable.

Then Tsuna bursts into tears and she is forced to concede that maybe, just maybe, dog petting may not be for everyone. It burns her deep to admit that. She's a little offended, honestly. Sighing hard, she picks the dog back up and trudges all the way back to the fence. She sets it down and the only thing keeping her from saying 'fuck it' and scratching its tummy is the steady backtrack of her brother wailing. The things she does for him, honestly.

"Go home, sweetie," she commands, stance firm and finger pointing resolutely out to the other side of the gate. The Chihuahua's little ears flatten against its skull and she feels her resolve wavering, but Tsuna is clearly afraid of dogs and she has to prioritize her sibling over her potential new best friend. Even if the look on its little face is utterly heartbreaking and she feels like scum.

"Go on," she repeats, chest heavy. It finally obeys and she sighs again, mourning the death of her bright, dog-filled future.

When she turns back around to comfort her brother, he is on fire.

She blinks.

Nothing changes.

At first she thinks it's some kind of trick of the light, but then he cries even harder and it _flares_ and-

Her head goes completely blank.

Her baby brother, in the _ten seconds_ she has had her back turned, has spontaneously combusted into bright orange fire without moving a fucking inch. Her baby brother, who is named Tsunayoshi. Tsunayoshi is on fire. There is _orange fire_ coming from _Tsunayoshi_.

Hysterical giggles are already welling up in her throat. Jackass is rushing out to scoop him up but Tsunami is too weak in the knees to do much of anything, much less help. She isn't even sure _how_ she would help. Other than being incredibly distressed, Tsunayoshi doesn't seem to be in pain and that is _weird_ to her because _he is on fire_.

Her breath catches. Jackass seems to be touching him just fine. There is no scorched grass where Tsuna sat. All signs point to Tsunayoshi not actually being on fire.

The signs can go fuck themselves because he is _very clearly_ on fire.

Tsunami is hit with the most intense sense of deja vu she has ever felt in either of her lives. Something about this sight is tripping all kinds of alarm bells in her head and it isn't just how her twin has suddenly lit up like he's the fucking sun.

What is it about this sight that's so familiar to her?

Her sweet, fashion-challenged grandpa who minutes ago successfully bought her affection with flattery approaches her adorable and lovable twin brother and pokes him in the forehead with two fingers. His fingers are _also_ on fire, absolutely amazing. She feels like she has seen this before, but that's _fucking insane_. She feels like she would remember something like that.

It is on the tip of her tongue.

As soon as her grandfather's flaming hands make contact, all orange fire ceases to burn and Tsuna just wilts like the life has been sucked out of him.

' _Oh_ ,' Tsunami recalls distantly. She wonders if this is what out-of-body-experiences are like. ' _I know where I've seen this._ '

…

 _Fuck._

When she Slips, she doesn't even fight it.

* * *

 **AN: Dogs are my friends. If you have not pet a dog today, please reconsider your lifestyle.**

 **A word about the update schedule: I'm going to be aiming for every Tuesday/Wednesday, depending on how fast I've managed to write the chapter.**

 **I do have a writing tumblr (eviclair . tumblr . com) if any of you want to peek in and ask questions or anything.**

 **Thanks to HeirOfChairs for proofreading/kicking my booty into writing gear every day. Meet me in the pit so I can kick your ass, its how I show affection**

 **Review at your own leisure and thank you for reading!**


	3. Fire

03: Fire

* * *

Tsunami takes one look at her slipspace and sits down, hard. Her eyes squeeze shut and she massages the bridge of her nose like it's somehow going to help the headache she is developing while _inside her own head_.

"What the fuck," she whispers. What the hell, it's not like there's anyone around around to hear her anyways. She cups her hands around her mouth and, as loudly as she can, hollers, "WHAT THE FUCK." In English, even, because her grasp of the Japanese language has yet to extend to curse words and she needs something a little stronger than 'poopy' to fully express her feelings.

Other than the usual soft orange light that is perpetually out of reach, her slipspace has always been dark. _Always_.

Now, she can hardly see her tiny metaphorical lightbulb through the harsh glare of the two new _actual_ lightbulbs two feet in front of it. Well, okay, she's using that word pretty loosely- they aren't so much lightbulbs as they are tiny supernovas conveniently trapped in some lightbulb-shaped glass.

"Everything is on fire. Why is everything always on _fire_ ," she mutters to herself, borderline hysteric. Clearly, igniting her little brother was not enough for the universe.

Which, speaking of, she is not even remotely sure how to process the fact that her stupid, noisy baby brother is actually the protagonist of an anime. An anime she is now living in. An anime about the fucking _mafia_ (that her brother is going to _lead_ , what the shit) and superpowers and goddamn time travel. Real, actual, honest-to-god time travel. She feels a little faint.

Less than an hour ago, she attempted to assassinate Sawada Iemitsu with her tiny little toddler legs.

She once put an icecube down Tsuna's back just to watch him shriek and try to finagle it out of his onesie.

She buries her face in her hands and _screams._

All in all, Tsunami is feeling really, really stupid right now. Her brother's name is Tsunayoshi, they were birthed by a woman named Nana, and their blonde father recently returned from an unexplained absence with an old man who needed _bodyguards._ It's been a long time since she has has anything to do with Katekyo Hitman Reborn, but not _that_ long. She'll admit that 'I was reincarnated into anime' is a really fucking weird thing to assume right off the bat, but honestly. All the clues had been _right there_.

It's probably a good thing she Slipped when she did. Had her mindscape not allowed her to separate herself from the majority of her negative emotions, she's fairly certain she'd be doing something rather more drastic than shrieking into her own palms.

...She should really go back.

The man she'd thought of as a sweet old grandpa was a real life fucking mafia boss and he was like, four feet away from her. Tsunami didn't want to think about what he might do if he caught sight of her completely blanking out, and he _would_ see her. She may not have burst into Dying Will Flames in the middle of the freaking lawn, sure, but she had no idea what she looked like when she zoned out. She could be drooling or something. Whatever it was, it probably wasn't typical toddler behavior and the last thing she needed was _Vongola Nono_ to be suspicious of _her._

Tsunami peeks through her fingers.

...She should also maybe address this whole fire thing. She was pretty sure that having unexplained burning shit in her slipspace was not something she should just ignore, especially given the whole 'Dying Will Flames are real' situation. Hauling herself up to her feet, she goes to investigate.

Unlike her tiny lightbulb friend, she is able to approach with no obstructions. This close up, she can see that they're… weird. Weirder than fun-sized mind fire usually is, she means.

(And what is her life anymore, that mind fire is something she has to fucking deal with. Lord alive.)

Tsunami flops down butt-first right in between the two and runs her fingers through the dark space between the light and the floor. Her fingers bump against some kind of… cord? Is this a cord? Are the magic lightbulbs in her head actually plugged into something? That strikes her as kind of weirdly detail-oriented for a figment of her imagination, but this whole situation is twelve kinds of fucked up anyways so she lets it slide without comment. There are other things to focus on at the moment, like the two orbs of fire a foot away from her face.

The one on her left is solid orange and burns in a wickedly curved cone that looks like it's coming from some unseen blowtorch. 'Old' isn't really a word she usually applies to fire, but, well. It's _old_. The lightbulb it's trapped in is maybe the size of her head, while the fire itself is as long as her hand from her wrist to the tip of her longest finger.

Tsunami glances over at the other one warily. It is young, spry, and full of life. For reasons that she can't quite put her finger on, she instantly likes it a lot less. It's fire is a deep orange with brighter patches throughout, but it makes up for its impurity with the sheer _volume_ it has. Unlike the blowtorch-like flame, this one fills its entire container to near bursting. As she watches, flames lick around the inner perimeter of the glass like they're searching for any weakness in the glass they can exploit in order to escape.

A little spooked, Tsunami scoots away from it and refocuses her attention to the bulb on her left. To be honest, she has no idea what to do with either one of these. Smashing them seems like a bad idea, if only because she has no idea what they are. Tsunami's life is anime now. She can't just break suspicious shit anymore, she might end up accidentally cursing her entire bloodline or something.

"Screw it," she sighs, palming at her eyes. If she is really lucky, the issue will resolve itself while she's back in the outside world working herself into a fucking panic attack. Someone is bound to have noticed her blanking out by now.

When she presses her hand against the glass to help haul herself back upright, it's slightly cool, as if the fire burning inside is only an illusion.

She only has time to marvel at how completely fucking weird that is before the glass under her fingers gives with a sharp pop and something _pulls._ She stumbles palm-first into the blowtorch flame within and-

no no no no no no no no no no

she's _burning,_ there is pain going all the way up her arm up her neck in her head, her brain is boiling inside her skull everything is red red red _red_ she needs to run she needs to escape she needs to get away from all this fucking _fire_ she needs to-

yank back-

* * *

She wakes up.

For a long moment, the only thing Tsunami can do is stare at the back of her eyelids. The sudden transition from _burning alive_ to cool and whole and unharmed is a little too much for her to wrap her head around. She focuses on her breathing.

Tsunami isn't sure what the hell just happened, but she won't be forgetting it any time soon. Once her head stops swimming and she feels like a person again, she opens her eyes. The sunlight seems much so harsher than it was before she Slipped and her eyes immediately water against it. She raises a hand to wipe them dry, wincing.

Her throat is _aching_.

The first thing Tsunami does once her vision readjusts is look for Tsuna. If he can spontaneously combust within ten seconds of her looking away from him, lord only knows what he's gotten up to in the full minute (five? ten?) she's been out of it.

He is fast asleep in Nana's arms, his thumb in his mouth and his body thankfully extinguished. Nana rocks him gently, humming softly. She glances up and-

They lock eyes.

Tsunami is expecting Nana to be at least a little relieved that her second child has surfaced from her drooling coma, but no such emotion is present on her face. Nana just smiles warmly at her like nothing unusual has happened.

Tsunami would pay a lot of money to figure out how she is pulling that off, because if she isn't mistaken, the kid being cradled in Nana's arms was doing a pretty good Human Torch imitation not even five minutes previous. She'd like to think _that_ qualified as unusual, if nothing else.

Her grandfather-Vongola Nono, jesus shit- is settling himself gingerly back into the lawn chair he'd been sat in before this debacle had begun. He looks a little frayed around the edges, which she figures is probably par for the course. Sealing flames can't be that easy to pull off or everyone would be doing it.

The ground under her backside suddenly shifts around and she realizes with a sharp jolt of fear that she is being held about six feet in the air. Her legs curl in tighter to her body and she blindly flails for the first thing within reach, which is an unfortunately familiar white wifebeater. She isn't in much of a position to be picky, though, and she bunches as much of it as she can manage in her tiny fists.

"Oh-ho! Finally decided to join us in the world of the living, hmm?" Jackass- _Iemitsu-_ laughs, jostling her with the force of it. She very, very carefully does not let herself react. That sentence has _several_ different meanings, none of which Iemitsu should have been able to figure out just from a brief space-out on her part.

"You fell asleep in the grass, princess," he elaborates, misconstruing her owlish look as one of confusion. Internally, she breathes a sigh of relief. Passing out still isn't good, persay, but it's a step up from just standing around like a mindless zombie. "Must've been tired, huh?"

She makes an affirmative noise and tucks her face against his shirt. It smells vaguely of sweat and something else thick and chemical that she cannot identify. It's far from the most comfortable position, but she needs to think and world is distracting.

First off, Tsunami has zero fucking clue what to make of Sawada Iemitsu anymore. It was easier when he was just some nameless dickbag that up and left his family for some unknown reason, but now that she knows who he is, it's a little more complicated. On one hand, she now has an entire shopping list full of reasons to hate him, which features gems like 'chronic liar', 'irresponsible deadbeat', and 'generally just an asshole to his kid'.

On the other hand, she knows that having him around too often would paint a big red target on her entire family's back for every mafioso with a grudge to come and shoot at. He literally _could not_ be at home with Nana and keep them safe at the same time. It was a lose-lose situation for everyone involved.

She still thinks he's a jackass for manhandling her like a sack of potatoes, though.

Second on her list, her grandfather had people murdered and extorted for a living. Tsunami is having a really hard time wrapping her head around that if only because the Ninth was so… _cute_. He's the textbook example of a sweet old man with his big poofy mustache and sparkling brown eyes. He looks like he would be more at home on a golf course than a shooting range, honestly.

There went her theory about him being Nana's dad, at any rate. Or Iemitsu's, actually, if she is remembering correctly. Is he even technically her grandfather? She tables the subject for now. Its not like she is going to be seeing much of him until she is older, so there is going to be plenty of time to get a feel for him in ten years when he is scoping out her little brother for potential boss-hood.

Which brings her to her final issue. She has about eleven or twelve years of prophetic knowledge concerning a lot of shit she wants absolutely nothing to do with and _zero_ idea how to use it. It'd be one thing if she was in Italy or somehow already involved with the mafia, but this? This was Namimori, Japan. The most exciting thing that was going to happen here for the next decade was Hibari Kyoya's rise to military dictatorship, and he could pull that off just fine without any interference on her part.

None of that changed the fact that she was probably going to end up smack dab in the middle of a criminal syndicate before she turned twenty.

Tsunami has to take a few slow, measured breaths to combat her rising anxiety. She's up shit creek and the only paddle she has might as well be made of cooked pasta for how useful it is to her right now.

"Oh-!" There's a soft screech of wood against wood and then the ruffling of fabrics. "I should check on lunch, shouldn't I?" Nana titters.

Tsunami doesn't bother raising her head as she patters off. When she's nose deep in shirt like this, it's easy to forget that the world is still happening around her. Rejoining it doesn't sound like something she's up for quite yet.

There's a long silence.

"...Nana seems very lively," Her grandfather-the Ninth- _Timoteo_ offers, somewhat amused. Iemitsu laughs lowly in agreement and the two of them fall back into tense silence.

Timoteo sighs.

"Is she asleep again?" There is a bone-deep weariness in his voice that sets her on edge and- oh, shit, wait, are they talking about _her?_ She forces herself to remain still and relaxed when Iemitsu tilts her slightly to check her face and breathing, even when his shirt begins slipping from her fingers. Hell if she knows what's going on here, but there's a churning low in her gut that warns her to play along. She listens.

"Out like a light," Iemitsu confirms. There's another weird pause during which he tries to maneuver her back into her original position. Tsunami wants nothing more than screech at top volume and scuttle down his body to the sweet, solid ground, but her curiosity is overriding her panic instinct. Nonetheless, it is taking a considerable amount of effort on her part to keep her face peaceful and her muscles lax.

"I suppose you're wondering why I sealed your son's flames."

"No, actually," Iemitsu hums. He shifts her around once again. "Tsuna's not going to be involved with us. Being a civilian but having that big of a flame signature is only going to attract trouble, so I get it. What I don't understand is why you had to _stop_ sealing Tsunami."

' _In for four, hold for seven, out for eight. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight.'_

If her heart rate jacks up, Iemitsu is going to _feel it_. Tsunami focuses harder on her breathing.

' _In for four, hold for seven, out for eight. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight.'_

"You likely noticed," Timoteo's voice is very, very soft. "But your daughter... did not seem to appreciate being touched with Sky Flames."

Tsunami has fuck-all idea what that's supposed to mean, but she does concede that 'did not seem to appreciate' being approached with _soulfire_ sounds a lot like her. Underneath her, Iemitsu stills.

"Yeah, I picked up on that. What happened?" He asks slowly. Tsunami really hopes she didn't try to frogkick her grandfather in the face or anything while he wasn't looking. Motor control is completely out of her hands when she Slips.

' _In for four, hold for seven, out for eight. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight.'_

"When I first saw Tsunami, I fully intended to seal her as soon as possible. Her, ah, _eye situation_ , it's very…" Timoteo pauses. "Well. A glow like that usually only occurs when an exceptional amount of flames are at play."

"Were there not?"

"Not enough to justify the glowing, no. Still, I chose to continue in the name of being thorough, which is where I encountered the issue at hand. When I tried to seal her, something… _pulled_ , for lack of a better phrase."

' _IN FOR FOUR, HOLD FOR SEVEN, OUT FOR EIGHT. IN FOR FOUR, HOLD FOR SEVEN, OUT FOR EIGHT.'_

She's not freaking out. She is totally calm. Still waters having nothing on her- she is the epitome of cool and collected and _not freaking out_.

"What was it?" Iemitsu asked, voice grave.

 _Tsunami_ had pulled. There'd been flames climbing up her arms and the only thing she could think to do was yank back and get out of the fucking fire- the fire, she realized, that was actually coming from _The Ninth._

' _The lightbulbs_ ,' she realized. If the fire was from her grandfather trying to seal her flames and it had come out from the lightbulb she had been touching, then was that… were her lights _people?_ If the old blowtorch fire had been Timoteo, then the wild one that set her on edge was… Iemitsu, right?

Her head hurt.

"Honestly, I'm not sure. It's possible that I could isolate the cause, given time, but I'm hesitant to risk it. Even the small flame I introduced was enough to knock her out for several minutes. There's no telling what side effects a repeat performance may have."

"She definitely took it worse than Tsuna," Iemitsu said. There is an emotion behind his voice that Tsunami can't quite pinpoint, but it leaves her feeling distinctly off-kilter and a little warm. She thinks it may be something like... concern? "Poor kiddo screamed like she was dying."

Hearing that from Iemitsu, who has been in the unique position of knowing what a death screech actually sounds like, is a little sobering. It explains the burning in her throat, at least. Hopefully none of the neighbors heard and decided to call the police, because she really doesn't want the Namimori Law Enforcement vs Actual Mafiosi deathmatch going down in her backyard.

"She may be flame sensitive," Timoteo muses. The wood of the porch chair creaks a bit, like he's leaning into it. Iemitsu makes a noncommittal hum low in his throat and shifts her up just a little higher, but Tsunami is too deep in thought to notice much. She shouldn't worry, right? The only person in this entire goddamn city who gave a single shit about the constant explosions and the naked kid streaking down the highway with his head on fire was going to be Irie Shoichi, who was too tiny to call the cops anyways. Things were probably fine.

"...Keep an eye on her," Timoteo advises. This jerks her back into the conversation at hand more effectively than a splash of water in the face because being watched by the mafia is literally the last thing she wants to be dealing with. Tsunami doesn't have to open her eyes to know that Iemitsu is frowning hardcore- she can feel it in the way his shoulders tighten and his breathing slows into a controlled sigh. It isn't hard to figure out why. Luckily for her, there is a whole list of reasons why Iemitsu really _can't_ keep an eye on her, first and foremost being that he has an entire subfamiglia to run.

Hell, she's not complaining. The idea of being _watched_ is enough to send shivers down her spine. Being watched by the _fucking mafia_ , especially now that she knows whats up? Straight up nightmare fuel.

All she'd gotten was the watered down, audience-friendly version of what the criminal underworld was like with the addition of literal goddamn superpowers and even that had her feeling like something in her chest had withered and died. Human experimentation was a thing that people condoned around here. Like actual fucking _hell_ she was going to sit around and let those assholes try and pick her brain.

Before Iemitsu can argue or agree or whatever his plan was, the back door slides open with a soft squeal.

"Lunch is ready!" Nana calls, chipper as ever. "Oh, is Tsu-chan asleep again?" The door squeaks again and suddenly Tsunami is being gently untangled from Iemitsu's shirt and relocated to Nana's hip. Being hauled through the air still sucks balls even with her eyes closed, she notes, screaming internally. Carefully limp, Tsunami allows her head to flop against Nana's shoulder and offers no resistance when the woman begins shuffling her limbs around into optimum carrying position. "I'll put her down with Tsu-kun. Food is on the table when you're ready!"

Nana is infinitely more comfortable to fake-snooze on than Iemitsu, so much so that Tsunami is sorely tempted to just conk out for real. Unfortunately, her head refuses to _shut the fuck up_ for more than two seconds at a time.

Forcing a breathing pattern does wonders for keeping her heart rate under control enough for her to think about things without the constant nagging fear of death by cardiac arrest, so she keeps it up even as Nana carts her back to her shared room with Tsuna.

 _Flame sensitive_. The idea has merit, she'll give it that. Something about it doesn't sit quite right with her, but it's the best she has to go off for now. Being touched with fire sure as hell _hurt_ , at any rate, which is apparently not the normal reaction? Tsunami does not understand why being papslapped in the cranium with burning handmeat would be anything other than horrifically painful, but then again this is literal magic she's dealing with. 'Supernatural Rainbow Fire 101' was not one of the classes she took in highschool.

Nana lays Tsunami down on her bed and an attempt on her life is immediately made by her squirming little brother. Tsuna does not 'cuddle'. Tsuna establishes dominance in the only way he knows how, which is by spreading as much of his body as he possibly can over as much ground as he can cover. In the three seconds since Nana has put her down, he has managed to roll over almost completely on top of her and shove his left arm directly into her mouth.

As soon as Nana leaves the room and closes the door, she smacks it right back out. Tsunami knows exactly where that boy's arms have been today and she wants no part of it in her body, thanks. She gets about ten seconds to enjoy her freedom before he makes another valiant attempt to take her place as the Alpha Twin out by smooshing her cheek with his grubby fingers. This is probably the best she's gonna get, so she leaves it be. It's not like she isn't used to this by now.

Tsunami finally opens her eyes and glances down to see how much danger she's in of being drooled on. Tsuna is well and truly knocked out and is snoring softly with his mouth wide open- oh, there it goes, all down her shoulder. Lovely.

He really is adorable, she thinks fondly, then balks at her own thoughts because he is actively slobbering on her person right now.

That shouldn't be charming.

It is _super_ charming.

She kind of wants to reach down and pinch his cute little cheeks, but he has her arms pinned down under his weight and also they are kind of slick with child-spittle. This is gross, she reminds herself. She does not enjoy it when babies try to cover her in facial fluids.

' _Sawada Tsunayoshi is drooling on me_ ,' she thinks, scrunching her nose. Fuck it all, that didn't help. He's _still_ cuter than a button and she's pathetically weak to his poofy hair and tiny little grabby hands. She's trying to have an existential crisis about her future here, goddamn it.

Tsunami can stress with the best of them, but it is weirdly difficult to summon a single shit about what's to come when she's immobilized by a sleeping child.

His fingers twitch against her cheek and his legs twitch like he's a dog having a dream.

Tsunami knows a losing battle when she sees one. She is also like, completely fucking pro at putting off issues until they grow completely out of control and come back to eat her ass alive, so she tables her crisis for another day and falls into a weirdly sound snooze.

She may not dream, but it isn't bothering her quite so much anymore.

* * *

An hour and a half later after Tsuna wakes her up by sitting on her till she wheezes, Nana informs them over late lunch that their Papa has left to go take care of some business.

"Papa's… gone?" Tsuna asks, frowning deeply. He sulks deep in his highchair and unleashes his fabled puppy eyes on his unsuspecting tablemates. Tsunami wilts a little under the crushing force of cute. "He di'nt say bye."

"He came to say goodbye, but you two were just so cute he couldn't bear to wake you up!" she squeals, looking thoroughly lovestruck. Tsunami pulls a face and resists the urge to touch the cold patch of wetness on her shoulder. She isn't sure what's so cute about seeing one child try to drown the other in spit, but hell, she'd been charmed too. She lets it go and settles for just being relieved that Iemitsu and Timoteo are out of her hair for the time being.

Tsuna doesn't seem satisfied with Nana's explanation, so he turns the full force of his bambi eyes to her instead.

" _Guh_ ," she wheezes aloud, because _holy shit_. Forget the fucking X-Burner- if he could weaponize those big sad eyes, half the world would melt into a puddle of starry eyed goo. Tsunami is absolutely defenseless against the puppy eyes and damn if her brother doesn't know it.

"He di'nt say _bye_." He repeats, eyes shimmering slightly with tears and lower lip pushed out just enough to look pathetic. She is _weak_.

"I'll kick 'im real hard for you," she promises. Nana hums disapprovingly, but her admonishments about unladylike behavior fall on deaf ears. Tsuna is smiling again, appeased at the thought of violent retribution. All traces of tears and sadness have been wiped from his face and she's getting the distinct impression that she's just been played. She doesn't even _mind_.

Tsunami can't help but feel like she is creating a monster. A sweet, chubby cheeked darling of a monster, but a harbinger of destruction nonetheless.

* * *

 **A/N: This chapter has not been beta'd quite yet as both I and my proofreader are ass deep in a Digimon marathon. Can't stop won't stop, but I wanted to at least get this out before we started Adventure 02 because at that point I'm gonna be too busy openly weeping to care about anything else. _I'm ready for Tri, man._ I'll get around to it sometime tomorrow.**

 **Thanks to HeirofChairs for being too busy watching children's television with me to read my chapter. When I realize my ultimate dream of making Enma Kozato my waifu, you can be our flowerboy.**

 **Review at your own leisure and thank you for reading!**


	4. Inertia

04: Inertia

* * *

Time passes.

The next three years of Tsunami's life are a little on the anti-climactic side. She's guilty of expecting everything to change after she discovered the truth of her situation, as if excitement and purpose were going to magically fall into her lap and give her some kind of direction.

It was a dumb thought, but a nice one all the same. If she wants to figure out her new path in life, then she is getting the impression that she is going to have to do it on her own. Disgusting. She was balls at the whole 'future planning' thing the first time around when the biggest thing she had to worry about was how she was supposed to afford wifi. Unsurprisingly, adding magic mafia nonsense into the mix is doing her no favors.

To give herself the illusion of productivity, Tsunami takes to poking around her slipspace at night before she sleeps. She spends the time wandering around in the dark looking for… anything, really. The tiny glow she had grown so used to seeing had stopped appearing after the Ninth's visit, which confirmed her suspicions that it had belonged to Tsuna. it's still out there in the darkness somewhere- dimmed, but hardly extinguished. She knows this because every so often she slams face-first into its glass and has to stop exploring for a while to blink the stars out of her eyes.

Similarly, Iemitsu's and Timoteo's light bulbs are still _around_ , but the fires in their cores have long since gone dead. She trips over them more than once. Her mental landscape is full of lightbulbs and she _still_ can't see jack-shit, which strikes her as supremely fucking unfair. This is also how she discovers that injuries sustained in the slipspace don't transfer over to her physical body; she'd been fully prepared to explain away how she ended up with a bloody nose overnight (fucking _Tsuna_ and his giant lightbulb, every goddamn time) but there wasn't a trace of blood to be found anywhere on her pillow.

Time passes.

Iemitsu visits a little more often nowadays, which, considering his previous average was about once every three years, isn't really saying much. He manages to swing by on major occasions like his anniversary and she and Tsuna's birthday and, to her eternal dismay, never fails to announce himself in the same way. Tsunami has serious concerns for how Nana is going to react if someone ever breaks in their house for real. She hardly even jumps when Iemitsu barrels in out of fuckshit nowhere with roses in hand. Tsuna, at least, screams like a tiny humanoid tea kettle and tries his damndest to scurry under the nearest piece of furniture.

'' _Flame sensitive' my ass,'_ she hisses internally the first time Iemitsu comes home after the Ninth's visit. He is loud and sudden like a bomb in the front hall and it scares the _everloving fuck_ out of her once again. She can sense him coming, sure, but only if she's in her slipspace when his light bulb decides to flicker on. Whatever power this is, it's functionally useless. Unfortunately, short of spending the rest of her life in a vegetable coma on the off chance that she might see him coming for once, she isn't sure how to work around it.

Time _passes_.

Nana decides that Tsuna and Tsunami are now too big to wear onesies, which Tsunami thinks is fucking ridiculous. No one is ever too old for onesies, especially the nice ones with the soft fur on the inside that Nana buys them for the winter months. She mourns their loss with much weeping and gnashing of teeth.

In exchange, Nana begins to let them pick and choose their own clothes to an extent. She reserves final veto power and, having seen some of the shit Tsuna tries to go for, this is for the best. Tsunami's baby brother shows an alarming affinity for fur coats and hoodies in eye-searing orange, while she herself prefers pastels and bows.

For the most part, Nana lets her have whatever she picks out. Most of what she rejects are, weirdly enough, the pants. Well, alright, the shorts. God, but she misses tiny shorts. Tsunami can understand Nana's angle, though- it's one thing to be (almost) fully grown in teeny tiny white shorts, but when you are five years old then it's just tacky. Even so, she mourns. Tsunami likes dresses and skirts well enough, but she's used to being a lazy teenager and getting all frilly _every single day_ is starting to rub her the wrong way.

The bra situation was much simpler. Little kids didn't need bras, and at first being in public without one on sent shivers up and down her spine. Nowadays, she dreads the age she has to return to them because _holy shit_ , she can breathe like... _all the time_ now. She can scratch her ribs and nothing can stop her! Laying facedown on the floor only hurts because there's usually a mildly concussed kid on her back! It is arguably more exciting to her than finding out she has knockoff flamey superpowers, if only because she is able to enjoy the benefits immediately and without hassle.

Overall, she's feeling pretty...okay? Nothing is exploding, she doesn't have to breastfeed, and Tsuna isn't impersonating a molotov cocktail with hair anymore. There's a metric fuckton of future bullshit to sort out, but there are just under ten _entire years_ to deal with it all.

"I am six," she reminds herself in her slipspace, wandering around with her arms outstretched (' _sneak up on me now, you glass motherfucker'_ ). Tsunami spends an embarrassing amount of time in here just talking to herself while she walks. Its nice to not need to worry about who might be listening. "What am I supposed to do? I'm _six_."

It sounds like an excuse. It _is_ an excuse.

Then, her monotony breaks.

* * *

{ **6** }

Tsunami is not unused to the churning, anxious energy that comes with the first day of school. She's only experienced it a dozen-odd times over her lifetime-and-a-half, after all. To be honest, by the time Nana packs them into the car early in the morning Tsunami is downright _zen_.

(And hell, that really should have been the first indicator that something was going to go wrong. She is a ball of lowkey paranoia on her _best_ days.)

Tsuna, on the other hand, is about as far from zen as he's ever been.

Her little brother is trying valiantly to become one with his boosterseat the entire ride over, tiny hands balled into fists and slouched so far down that Tsunami has serious concerns that he's going to up and melt right through the harness onto the floor. Every so often, his legs kick around with nervous energy that he can't keep bottled up and she has to dodge out of range a time or two. The mighty frown on his face broadcasts his displeasure with the situation, but honestly, he's about as intimidating as a grumpy kitten. He is cute when he pouts, but Tsunami gets the impression that telling him so is not going to help anything. She takes a different approach.

"Hey, Tsuna-fish," Tsunami prods both verbally and physically. Her arms are too short to reach far enough to wiggle her fingers all the way into his sides, so she settles for tapping staccato beats on his arm. The shit-face she receives when he looks up is _magnificent_.

" _What._ "

"Whatcha makin' that face for?" She didn't think it possible, but Tsuna finds a way to slide even _further_ down his seat. Half his face has vanished under his shirt collar and all she can see are a pair of big brown eyes glaring at her petulantly.

"...nna go…" He mumbles, words obscured partly by his pout and partly by the giant wad of shirt he is trying to turtle into. Fuck, but he's precious.

"Tsu- _na_ ," she whines, letting the syllables draw on an on until Tsuna pops his head out of his shirt and speaks clearly, if for no other reason than to make her shut up.

"I _said_ , I don't wanna go!"

"Me neither," Tsunami shrugs, and Tsuna seems a little blindsided by her easy agreement. "Mama says we have to, though. Why're you _scared?_ "

"'m not scared!" He huffs, offended. Tsunami is not fooled. His hands have yet to unclench and though he's sitting a little straighter now, his shoulders are almost up to his ears. Nana muffles a giggle behind her hand from the driver's seat but offers no other commentary.

Tsunami chooses not to say anything to her brother's blatant lying. She just sets her jaw and pins him with a hard stare. Tsuna makes a solid effort at holding her gaze, but the longer she goes without blinking the more uncomfortable he gets. When he begins to fidget, she goes in for the killing blow.

"Tsu- _naaaaaa_ ," she drones, poking at his arm. After less than three seconds of her tuneless whining, he is bright red and fully upright in his seat, slapping her hands away with extreme prejudice.

"Stop it!"

"Only if you tell me what's wrong, Tsu- _naaaaaaaaa_ ~"

If his feet could reach the floor, Tsunami's pretty sure Tsuna'd be stomping them right now. It takes real effort on her part to keep her voice from showing how close she is from busting a gut laughing at her brother's tiny, ineffective stink-face.

Finally, Tsuna folds. His crumbling will is reflected in his body language as he sags lifelessly against his seatbelt, looking for all the world like he's been attacked by some kind of soul-sucking demon.

"'m not _scared_ ," he repeats obstinately. Tsunami sucks in another breath to restart her droning, but Tsuna quickly finishes his statement before she has the chance to let loose. "...What if ever'body's really mean?"

"Then I'll beat them up," she promises solemnly. It's not an empty oath. Tsunami is fully and totally willing to throw down with a bunch of little kids in defense of her brother, if only because he _needed_ it. Tsuna wasn't the fastest or bravest kid on the block. He screamed when he got nervous, cried when he was mad, and despite his endless chatter in the safety of their home, he stuttered something fierce in front of strangers. He was a prime target for bullying, and Tsunami is in the unique position to know for a fact that he is going to get the shit beat out of him unless something intervenes. Nominally, herself.

Nana takes this moment to interject, catching Tsunami's eye through the rearview mirror. What little she can see of her face is soft and amused, but there is a glint of something hard in her eyes.

"Now, now, Tsu-chan," she chastises gently. "You shouldn't hurt the other kids! If someone's mean to you, I want you go find a teacher or tell Mama, okay?"

Tsunami blinks slowly.

Like hell she will. Still, for the sake of appeasing Nana and staying out of immediate trouble, Tsunami nods obediently. If she is pouting, well, she is six. Six year olds sulk, right?

Tsuna copies her, looking more relieved than stubborn like her. Slowly, his hands begin to unclench. Tsunami takes the opportunity to snatch the one closest to her. His palms are sweaty and it's nasty as hell, but at this point she's pretty used to Tsuna's snot, sweat, and tears ending up all over her person so she doesn't mind so much. He makes a loud noise of embarrassment, still raw from all her ribbing, and tries to jerk his hand out of her grip. Tough shit for him, because she is clingy when she's nervous and the paranoia is starting to settle back in.

She was not lying when she said she'd beat up a six year old for Tsuna. Tsunami would deck that hypothetical motherfucker in a second, no questions asked. People paid _lots of attention_ to violent kids, but that was fine. Totally fine. She was completely prepared for attention, she was a grown-ass woman. A grown-ass woman who was fully ready to sucker punch a child in the face.

Tsunami slides down low in her seat, trying her hardest to become one with her boosterseat.

She's so, _so_ incredibly fucked.

* * *

Namimori Elementary is a reasonably sized establishment with two, _maybe_ three floors. It's been painted slightly off-white and there are clusters of floor-to-ceiling windows every six feet or so. There are a few cherry blossom trees spaced evenly along the sidewalks lining the perimeter. Not all of them have bloomed quite yet, but they are well on their way.

There is a small crowd of people by the door that swells slowly as each new student disengages from their parents to walk inside. As the Sawada unit draws nearer to the school doors, Nana imparts some final words of wisdom.

"Don't be afraid to ask question if you don't understand something, alright? And play nice with the other kids! Oh, and don't get too dirty during play-time! Don't forget to be polite to your teachers and make a lot of friends and… and…." Nana presses a hand to her mouth and breathes in deeply, eyes suspiciously wet. Shit– _Fuck,_ is she crying? Tsunami reels back an entire step, hands moving frantically in the air as Tsuna makes his tea kettle noise and tugs at his mother's skirt. Nana is for real going to cry, heck no, Tsunami isn't here for this shit.

"Mama, _no_ –"

"Mama please stop it –"

"My little babies are growing up so fast!" Nana chokes out, wiping at her eyes delicately. Tsunami is supremely uncomfortable with all of this and, for the life of her, cannot think of a single thing to say. Forgoing words, she shuffles closer and stiffly pats Nana on the arm. There, there. Please stop.

"Mama," Tsuna starts, concern clear in his voice but Nana just shakes her head and takes in another deep breath, straightening her back.

"Tsu-chan, keep Tsu-kun out of trouble, won't you? And Tsu-kun, you'll protect your sister, right?"

The twins trade a look. Nana… probably has things a little backwards. If anything, it's going to be Tsuna pulling his sister out of whatever hot water she's landed herself in trying to look out for him and they both know it. Regardless, they reassure her in their own ways that they've understood her intent.

"Yes, Ma'am." Tsuna nods.

"Mmkay." Tsunami says, avoiding eye contact.

She gets a stern look for her flippancy, but Tsunami doesn't pay it any mind. She's starting to notice that Nana has something of a _fixation_ on instilling her with air and graces and, god forbid, actual _manners_. Tsunami is polite when it counts, and that's about all she personally cares about. Besides, if things keep going at the rate they are now, she and Tsuna are going to be late to the first day of their first year of school.

"Go on then," Nana sniffles. Tsunami grabs Tsuna by the hand and _bolts_ before Nana really does start crying again. The neighborhood mom gang has already smelled fresh blood and are closing ranks, anyways. Nana will be fine.

"Nami-nee!" Tsuna yelps, stumbling slightly over perfectly even ground is his rush to keep up with her. She slows, but refuses to stop until they are indoors and well out of Nana's sight. One can never be too careful with first-time mothers.

"Sorry, Tsuna-fish," she snickers, not all that sorry. "I gotta keep you out of trouble, remember?"

As one, they peek out one of the many windows at the scene they have fled and flinch back just as fast. Crying parents. Crying parents _everywhere._ Tsuna shivers.

"...Lets just go," he mumbles, tugging on their conjoined hands. Tsunami turns and glances over her shoulder at the sea of children milling about, some with adults and some, like them, without. Hardly anyone is taller than about four feet and –

Oh.

Oh gosh.

"Oh _no_." Her grip spasms for a moment and Tsuna jumps, looking at her with concern and a touch of panic.

"N-nami-nee?"

Tsunami presses a hand to her chest and wills her heart to just fucking chill for like, two seconds, _please_.

' _Oh shit_ ,' she wheezes internally. ' _Oh_ fuck _, they're all adorable.'_

* * *

' _Children are monsters and I am in hell._ '

Sawada Tsunami is a sucker for a squishy face and damn it all, it is ruining her. Doubled over her table with her head tucked in the crook of her elbow, she can almost pretend like the chaotic hell of foreign fluids and screechy gremlins is happening to someone who is not her. School has only been going for a week and she is already prepared to throw in the towel, fuck all of this. Spending half a decade only really interacting with two people has left her completely unready to deal with crowds, let alone crowds of obnoxious kids. Cute faces be damned, they were _so loud_.

After Tsuna had exited his screaming infant stage, she had taken his newfound volume control for granted. Now, surrounded by twenty-odd six-year-old kids all clamoring over one another to be heard and seen, she pines bitterly for the days when all she had to put up with was one moderately squeaky child.

The kiddo in question had given up on trying to make her crawl out of her self-imposed silence shell around day three and now sits in the chair next to her, coloring diligently. There is about an hour carved out of every day before recess where the whole class sits down for arts and crafts. It's about the only time time of the school day where everyone is allowed to socialize freely and, consequently, it is Tsunami's least favorite hour to be awake and alive. Tsuna uses it to draw pictures of whatever catches his fancy, either too nervous or too caught up in his art to join the rest of the kids. Tsunami can't tell; she's too busy blocking out the world. Headphones would be a fucking blessing right about now.

"Aino-sensei is looking," Tsuna warns, kicking lightly at her shins. Grumbling under her breath about life's injustices, Tsunami hauls herself upright and steals one of Tsuna's crayons to scribble mindlessly on her own sheet of colorful paper. The class's warden is a bright and chipper twenty-something with soft pink hair and a penchant for dragging quiet students into the thick of things to make them open up. Having been a victim of this, Tsunami had been only mildly annoyed with the woman up until she'd tried the same thing on Tsuna. Poor kid had almost _cried_. Tsunami still doesn't have the vocabulary to communicate her exact feelings towards her teacher, but they're far from pleasant.

"Hey, um, Suzume-chan," she calls loudly to the girl sitting at the table-desk behind her as Aino-sensei walked by. "D'you have any yellow crayons I can use?" See, sensei, look. She's a social creature, damn it.

Suzume –and was that her first name or her last name? Fuck, she didn't know– turns slightly at the sound of her name and jumps something fierce when she catches Tsunami's eyes. The dark-haired girl fumbles for a moment before jerkily shoving the coveted yellow crayon into Tsunami's hands.

"H-here you g- _o_!" Suzume's voice cracks on the last word and she whips back around, ears reddening. Tsunami stares at her new acquisition with a small frown. That was...weird. Eyebrows raised, she glances at Tsuna, who only shrugs before returning to his drawing. Well. Alright then.

"Kay, she's with somebody else now," Tsuna greenlights a few minutes later, craning his neck to get a good view.

 _Thump_.

Tsunami's head hits her desk with a dull noise and she sighs out slowly through her nose. Twenty more minutes to go.

" _Nami!_ " her brother hisses abruptly, kicking at her legs with renewed vigor.

"Wh- _ow!_ What?!" she yelps, shooting ramrod straight and drawing her legs up closer to her body to bring them out of range. If she has shoeprints on her white socks, there is going to be a murder. Tsuna is focused on something just over her shoulder and when she registers the cornered expression on his face, she turns as well.

Shit. Shit _fucking_ damn it all.

Aino-sensei is guiding a little girl to their table with a hand on her back and a wide, pearly smile on her lips. In contrast, the little girl looks nothing short of mutinous. Her arms cross in front of her and her tiny face is set into a truly majestic bitchface, the likes of which Tsunami has only ever seen on grown women.

"Sawada-kun, Sawada-chan," Aino-sensei begins, eyes closing under the force of her smile. "I'm going to have Kurokawa-chan sit with you two for a while, alright? Play nice!" Then she is gone, returning to her patrol looking significantly more satisfied than before.

There's an awkward stretch of silence between the three of them as they look at each other, unsure of how to proceed.

Behind them, someone bursts into wet, shrieky tears. All three of them flinch at the same time.

"...Um. So... what'd you do?" Tsunami asks finally, kicking out the chair next to her. As far as she's concerned, anyone as disgusted as she is by the noise level is probably pretty okay. The girl sits down with a flounce, face still screwed up.

"What makes you think I did something?" she bites, turning her head sharply. Tsunami eyes her for a few seconds before giving her biggest sigh of the day and melting back into her prone position. Mutual distaste for the screaming aside, she has to remember that she is still talking to a moody six-year-old. Eleven in the morning is way too early to be dealing with this. She props her chin on her arms and levels the girl with the most unimpressed stare she can muster until the girl glances over at her.

"People who don't talk go with people who _do_ talk," Tsunami nods towards the front of the room where the majority of the noise is originating from. "People who get in trouble come over here." Their own half of the room is sparsely populated, but the few not tangled in the crayon party up front are coloring away diligently nonetheless. Tsunami knows the names of maybe three of them, but they're well behaved and focused. The rowdiest troublemakers usually get sentenced to time-out over here specifically because it's nigh-impossible to rope these kids into noisy shenanigans. There's a sense of wordless kinship between all of them that she has grown to appreciate.

"Aino-sensei thinks the loud kids'll m-make the quiet ones talk more," Tsuna explains hesitantly, crayon stilling. Tsunami looks up at him in surprise. This is the first stranger he's willingly initiated conversation with all week.

Hell, this is the first stranger _she's_ willingly initiated conversation with all week. There is probably a connection there and she does not want to face it.

Guilt twinges in her chest for a moment. For once, her little brother has been following her lead instead of the other way around. Navigating school has put him way out of his comfort zone, and he's been letting her call the shots while he figures out where he fits in. And what has she been doing? She's been hiding in the back of the room and refusing to talk to anyone, that's what. _Hell_ , but she's a bad role model.

The girl glares at the wall darkly for a more seconds. Slowly, she lowers her eyes to stare at the floor.

"...Tatsuzo Ryoma said my socks were ugly, so I called him a stupid monkey," she mumbles defensively, embarrassed but completely unapologetic. Tsunami can't help the snort that escapes her before she can muffle it into her arm and receives a direct eye-contact glare for her slip. The girl's scowl deepens.

Fuckin' adorbs. But, there was something...

"What'd you say your name was again?" Tsunami asks, lifting her head a little higher. She takes stock of the girl in front of her, paying a little more attention to things that aren't her (genuinely incredible, awe-inspiring) bitch-face. Her hair is dark, wavy, and chopped rather severely around her chin. Tsunami can't quite decide if her eyes are grey or maybe just a really washed-out purple, narrowed into unfriendly slits as they are. Her cheeks are nowhere near as puffy as Tsuna's or even Tsunami's, but the pouty snarl she's pulling is pushing them out enough to be fucking precious anyways.

The girl raises her chin and looks Tsunami up and down assessingly. If her intention is to make Tsunami feel like she's being judged at the stand, then she is doing an _excellent_ job. Something about this kid is making something in her brain sit up and squint.

"Kurokawa Hana. Who're you?"

Ah.

Tsunami kicks at Tsuna's legs under the table to answer for her because if she tries to talk right now, she's probably going to say something _incredibly_ embarrassing and weird.

"U-um! I'm Sawada Tsunay… uh, just Tsuna," her brother tries with a slight stammer. He is looking at her for reassurance or guidance or _something_ , she doesn't know, she's having trouble maintaining eye contact.

How is she supposed to feel? _Kurokawa Hana_. This is the first canon character she has ever met– Tsuna notwithstanding, mostly because by the time she realized who he has she had already seen him puke, be naked, and puke _while_ naked so the magic was already mostly gone –and she is floundering in a sea of her own emotions. It is like meeting a celebrity, only the celebrity is only famous in an alternate reality and also they are six years old and have knobby little knees and… no, no this simile has completely escaped her. It doesn't even matter because _Kurokawa Hana_.

"T-this is my sister, Nami. Um. Tsunami?" Tsuna's voice is reaching that specific pitch that, like a child screaming in fear, pings off of whatever protective instinct she has buried way deep down. Tsunami shakes herself back into reality and takes a second to replay what he said.

"Yeah, uh, Nami's fine," she shrugs. Nearly two decades speaking English in a western society had pretty much ruined her. The hell did she care that someone was using her first name? If a six-year-old girl wants to call her by her given name then gosh darn it she is going to let her.

(Kurokawa Hana bites her lip. She isn't exactly sure what she's supposed to do in this situation and, well… there _are_ two Sawadas. It's not like they mind. And it'd be weird if she was using nicknames for them and they just called her 'Kurokawa', right? People might get the wrong idea.)

She tells them this imperiously, back straight and ankles crossed. Kurokawa Hana has an awful lot of airs and graces for a six-year-old, Tsunami notes. Nana would probably love her, troublemaking sass notwithstanding. She isn't sure if she's genuinely impressed because Hana just does a great job of seeming better than everyone else or if it's just the starstruck wonder talking.

"So… Hana-chan then?" Tsunami's feet are kicking something fierce under the table. There's an energy in her bones she can't quite seem to get out and she's more awake and engaged then she's been all week.

(Behind her, Tsuna sounds out the syllables of Hana's name carefully, trying to make it so he won't trip over them in the future.)

Tsunami is going to hold on to this child and _never let go_ , so help her God.

* * *

Six months later, she begins to rethink this plan.

Tsunami swings her legs in wide, lazy circles. Her head is propped up on her folded arms and the only thing between her and a nap is the steady arguing of her two favorite people over her head. There is a fly on her paper and she doesn't have the requisite number of fucks left in her body to do anything about it.

"...ave to write them like _this_ so that people know they're TV show titles," Hana's authoritative voice barks commands somewhere on her left. The fly crawls jerky circles around Tsunami's essay, stopping every few millimeters to rub its little feelers together.

"But I just said it was a show right there!" Tsuna argues back. Papers rustle. "See! ' _Gundam, the TV show that I watch.'_ "

Can flies plot? Tsunami thinks this one looks like it's plotting. Something about the way it rubs its little hands together and twitches at every sudden noise.

"I _know,_ but you still have to do it. Those're the rules, my mom said so," Hana insists, clearly frustrated with the resistance she is encountering.

Tsunami's fly crawls a few more inches to her right. She wonders about the logistics of keeping a fly as a pet. Tsuna will never consent to having a dog and it _hurts_ her inside. Flies and other gross bug things are all she has left.

"Thats _dumb_ , though. Why do they need to see it all slanty if I tell them what it is _right there_ ," Tsuna taps a line on his paper for emphasis.

The fly buzzes away.

" _Don't leave meeee_ ," Tsunami whines, drawing out her words several beats longer than they have any business being. She can't handle listening to a six year old lecture another about proper MLA citation without some kind of distraction, she'll _die_. Again.

Tsuna kicks her sharply under the table at the same time that Hana whacks her over the head with a thin ream of notebook paper. Tsunami appreciates that they are bonding over the various ways they can cause her physical and emotional pain, but she also lowkey wants to go back to six months ago when they all barely spoke.

"Stop sleeping! Aino-sensei wants us to read these to the whole class tomorrow and you aren't even working on it!" Hana chastises. She makes a move for the paper partially pinned under Tsunami's arm.

"'m not sleeping," Tsunami corrects. Much to her distress, she has at no point actually achieved unconsciousness, though not for lack of trying. "And I've written plenty."

"You only wrote three sentences!" Tsuna contradicts immediately. Indignant, he digs his little fingers into her ribs and Tsunami folds like wet paper, muffling a squeal. He is a dirty, filthy traitor to the cause and once again it is only his cute face that saves him from annihilation. It is not, however, enough to save him from sweet, sweet revenge.

Hana is used to the cycle of poke-and-be-poked by now and doesn't even bat an eyelash when Tsunami lunges for Tsuna's armpits. She takes the opportunity for what it is and plucks Tsunami's essay off the desk.

"' _When I grow up, I want to be a-_ " Hana squints and brings the paper closer to her face. Tsuna slaps Tsunami's hands away from his body with the speed and ease of a practiced professional. "...Hang on, what's a ...mortician?"

"Funeral director," Tsunami says cheerfully. Tsuna recoils in disgust and Hana sighs through her nose, looking for all the world like a woman thrice her age.

"You're such a freak," she complains. "Anyways. ' _Morticians only have to deal with people who are already dead. I feel this is a good match for me._ ' And that's it. Sawada Tsunami-"

"-Hana, no, you know how I feel about full names-"

"- you could at least _try!_ "

Tsunami whines and flops back on the table because yes, okay, Hana is totally right. She isn't even taking this remotely seriously. But honestly, what is she supposed to say?

' _When I grow up, I want to be still alive and not a criminal. In the event that this last thing is impossible, I want to at least be a really cool criminal that the other criminals don't mess with because they're too scared of my little brother, who will probably be the coolest criminal of them all. Don't arrest me, please.'_

Not happening. Besides, for all that it's a profession that she chose completely at random, Tsunami finds the idea of being a mortician kind of charming in an ironic way. She'd be a zombie directing funerals. The tabloids would love it.

"I'm _sorry_ ," she pulls the word out and out and out and doesn't stop until Tsuna claps a hand over her mouth. She licks it. He makes a face but refuses to budge. Tsunami can feel her power as an older sibling draining away a little more every day as Tsuna gets more and more savvy to her ways. She'll have to get creative soon.

"Stop doing that," he commands, glaring with all the force he can muster. Tsunami makes a grand show of rolling her eyes, but nods. Tsuna removes his palm and wipes it off on her skirt because he's kind of a little shit.

"You're gonna get a bad grade," Hana warns, waving the paper for emphasis. Tsunami shrugs and plucks her assignment out of the other girl's grip, settling it back safely under her arms. She has literally forty thousand other things in her life to worry about. A bad grade on a 'what I wanna be' assignment in her first year of school doesn't even register.

"What about you?" she challenges, voice muffled by her arms. "What're you writing about?"

Hana spins her paper around and slides it to the middle of the table so all three of them can see. Her writing is large but impeccably neat, and she has taken the time to add an illustration of what Tsunami assumes is her in a business suit surrounded by piles of cash.

"Oh, good idea," Tsunami congratulates and grabs a fistful of crayons so she can add some tasteful additions to her own paper. She's thinking a full-color spread of her embalming a corpse, or maybe the open casket funeral of a burn victim.

"C-E-O," Tsuna says carefully.

"It means I'm going to run my own company," Hana boasts, crossing her legs and straightening her back.

"...Huh." Her little brother is clearly unimpressed. Judging from the scowl Hana's face twists into, she has noticed and is equally as unamused. "That's cool, too, I think."

"She's gonna be super rich and famous and stuff," Tsunami adds, recognizing how utterly fucking boring running a business sounds to a six year old who still makes an effort to watch cartoons on saturday mornings.

(She says 'makes an effort' because for all his enthusiasm about shonen anime, Tsuna is terrible at getting up in the mornings. As someone who shares a room with him and routinely tries her best to sleep till noon, Tsunami appreciates this.)

"Oh!" Looking significantly more engaged, Tsuna reassess Hana's paper. "That fits you, yeah! 'nd then I can beat up all the mean people who talk about you on TV!"

Hana opens her mouth, looking smug, but then closes it again as she turns Tsuna's words over in her head. Her mouth twists like she's torn between flattery and exasperation.

"Yeah. You. You'll beat them up." Hana doesn't bother trying to sound convinced.

"Haha, what," Tsunami chimes in, flat and bland. She doesn't even elect to look up from her coloring. "You can't even beat _me_ up."

"Not _yet_. See, see, look,"

Tsunami's crayon stills in her hands and she has to lean back to properly appreciate the image her brother has shoved not two inches from her nose. It's a full-color spread of him as a giant robot, shooting multi-colored lasers from both fists. The city is on fire and there are weird purple things flying around in the air. Tsunami thinks they may be rhinos? Some kind of quadruped for sure.

"Dude, _nice_. Hana can use her money to make you a cyborg!"

" _Yes_ ," Tsuna crows, looking up at Hana with big hopeful eyes. Tsunami is once again forced to admire how incredibly powerful Hana's aversion to precious babyfaces is when she doesn't even bat an eyelid.

"Absolutely not."

As Tsuna tries his best to wheedle a hypothetical loan of several million yen of of the other girl, Tsunami returns to her coloring. By the time Hana remembers Tsunami's bullshitted essay, it'll probably be too late.

* * *

Spoiler alert: Tsuna isn't the one to get in the first fight.

When she is seven years old, Sawada Tsunami loses her damn mind.

Or, well. She wishes she does. Pleading temporary insanity would be a nice and convenient way to justify her actions to herself, but she's self-aware enough to know that it would be a blatant fucking lie.

It goes like this:

Kurokawa Hana is a brilliant, wonderful girl with a sharp mind and a sharper tongue. Kurokawa Hana is also, on occasion, a huge fucking moron who should maybe not walk around poking hornet's nests but-

No. No, that's not fair at all. Hana was just standing up to a bully and Tsunami is projecting her frustration with herself onto targets that don't deserve it. God, what the hell is wrong with her.

 _A lot,_ but she's off topic.

Tatsuzo Ryoma has always been someone that Tsunami is, at the very least, peripherally aware of. This is largely because he is a whole head larger than her, aggressive, and not afraid to speak whatever is on his mind no matter how cruel or uncalled for it may be. Tsunami isn't exactly his biggest fan, but Hana seemed to have something out for him on a personal level after that first week of school when he'd called her socks ugly. Tsuna is scared of him, but Tsuna is scared of nearly everyone on some level so she hadn't paid it much mind.

It starts with the kid in the class across the hall, a tiny little dark-haired thing who pings off enough of Tsunami's cuteness radars that she can't help but feel her heart ache a little when she starts noticing Tatsuzo going after him. To be fair, Tatsuzo has gone after nearly everyone at some point (he's called her cheeto face once or twice and she's ashamed of how long it took her to stop blushing) so she doesn't pay it much mind.

That day, Tsunami and Hana are sitting on the hard plastic lip of the pit, arguing the merits of shoujo manga (Hana can shove it where the sun don't shine, shoujo manga is objectively garbage and should not under any circumstances be considered literature) while Tsuna tries and fails to drown them out by constructing a shoddy sandcastle just behind them. The kid is making sandcastles, too, nearby but far enough away that he's clearly respecting their space.

Then, in incredibly cliche schoolyard bully fashion, Tatsuzo strolls up and puts his foot straight through the kid's watchtower.

The move is sudden and violent enough that it startles all of them. Tatsuzo's a jackass, for sure, but this is the first time he's decided to be more than verbally abusive.

Tsunami is suddenly very, very aware of just how much bigger than all of them he is. She should find an adult, she thinks, palms going clammy.

"Let's go," Hana urges, standing swiftly and brushing off her skirt, more on less on the same wavelength. "We shouldn't get involved with this idiot."

"He'll _hear you_ ," Tsuna hisses, already scrambling to his feet, sandcastle forgotten.

Tatsuzo Ryoma is a lot of things, but hard of hearing is not one of them.

" _What'd_ you just call me?" he snarls, whipping around and stalking towards them.

Tsunami swallows a hysterical giggle. She not- she's never been called out like this. She's used to passive-aggressive cold wars and smacktalk in the bathroom, not actual physical threats coming _too close too close_. She lunges forward to snag Tsuna by the back of his shirt and drags him back out of the sandpit where the ground is firm and easy to run on. She'll talk a big game but Tatsuzo is way bigger up close than she thought he was and wow, no, fuck that shit right on outta here. Sometimes the best strategy is to _run the fuck away_ to live another day-

He walks right past them without so much as a glance. Tsunami's brain stalls out. Sputters. Restarts.

He is toe to toe with _Hana_ and for the first time, Tsunami sees her friend begin to look a little unsure, a little off-balance.

The sweet-looking dark-haired kid is already long gone, having seen his opportunity for what it was and she envies him something fierce because while _she_ could probably outrun this guy on her own, Tsuna was about as capable as a white girl in a horror movie. Dragging his ass would slow her down too much and that wasn't even accounting for Hana, who had probably never bothered to run anywhere in her _life_ and shit, shit, _balls_ , there's no good way out of this. Her heartrate begins to pick up speed and she can hear her breathing too loud inside her own head and her hands are sweaty and and and-

* * *

-no, no, no, Slipping is Bad, _wake up_ -

* * *

And then she's wasted too much time floundering because Tatsuzo is planting both his meaty hands on Hana's shoulders and _shoving._ She goes down hard in a spray of sand and lays there for a moment, eyes wide.

Everything seems to pause. Tatsuzo looks surprised at himself, like he hadn't expected Hana to actually go down. Hana, gaping and searching for something to say, doesn't look like she expected it either. For a moment, no one breathes.

Tsuna breaks the spell.

The shirt in Tsunami's grip wrenches once, twice, and disappears and she almost _shrieks_ because her brother is suddenly _right there_ , what the fuck, knees shivering and with tears already bubbling up but planted right in between Hana and the danger.

"D-don't...y-you sho… shouldn't-!" Tsuna's voice is so, so small. With every word he tries and fails to choke out Tatsuzo's gobsmacked expression twists a little more until he's outright sneering and then-

"Buzz off, shrimp."

And then Tsuna is in the dirt too.

Tsunami doesn't even feel _real_. Her head has drifted off somewhere outside of her body and she's having a hard time focusing on standing and breathing at the same time, but she is keenly aware of one thing.

There are two choices in front of her.

She can start talking _real_ fast and try to diffuse the situation before it escalates into something worse than what it is, or she can cut her losses, run, and find a teacher.

The second is ruled out immediately for obvious reasons, in part because Hana and Tsuna are still on the ground and running means leaving them there.

...Also, she can't move her legs.

"H-hey," she begins, but her tongue lies thick and dry in her mouth and her voice is already shaking. Tatsuzo is embracing his new weapon, his new advantage over everyone around him and he is rounding on her, shit _fuck_ he's big, this isn't going to end well, what the hell was she even thinking-

Tsuna is looking at her. There is sand in his hair and his eyes are wide, wide, wide and god, she never wants to see that look on his face ever again, hurt and confused and _afraid_.

This is Tsunami's fault. There's a thousand and one things she could have done different, done better. She should've gotten an adult the minute Tatsuzo showed up or she should've stood up for Hana or she should've, at the very fucking least, stopped Tsuna from getting hurt.

Instead, she'd let her fear stop her cold.

Tatsuzo's hands are coming up towards her and she makes a split-second decision. Tsunami is scared. Tsunami is really, disproportionately _terrified_ of this child, but she is infinitely more afraid of looking her brother in the eye after she gets her ass kicked and so she focuses on that instead. Recalling self-defense tips from a life long abandoned, she ducks under his arms and steps into his space. She pulls her leg back and squeezes her eyes shut, praying to whoever is willing to listen that she will get out of this _alive, please lord, seven years old is way too young to die_.

Tsunami nails him in the balls with everything she has and he drops like a _rock_. She yelps and skitters backwards a half-step as he doubles over with a short scream. She takes a deep breath- no, it's stuck in her throat, abort, fuck, she is shaking with too much adrenaline and her head is spinning around faster than she can keep up with.

Tsunami has never… never hurt someone on purpose like that before. There should be some kind of- some kind of rush, yeah? A satisfied feeling in her gut for avenging something, for proving that she's the badder bitch on the playground? For winning?

...Tsunami just feels hollow and ill.

" _Bitch_ ," Tatsuzo wheezes. The slur sounds jarring in his squeaky child-voice, but Tsunami doesn't have time to care because as suddenly as he went down, he is trying to get back up again. There's a look in his eyes, dark and prideful and _humiliated_ and it occurs to Tsunami that this time he is going to go for her _._ As in, swinging fists and actual rage and it is probably going to hurt really, really bad.

She doubts that anyone has ever really stood up to him before, and now she's gone and punted him in the balls. Speaking of, she could've sworn that groin hits were supposed to incapacitate for longer than that, how fucking weak even are her little noodle legs and _holy shit_ he's faster than she thought he was-

Tsunami has never experienced this first-hand, but she knows how this cycle works. If she doesn't end this right now, it is going to happen again. She has taken the hornet's nest in both hands and thrown it against the fucking wall, and this kid is going to have it out for her until she's been hurt or humiliated enough to soothe his ego. Getting shoved on a playground is going to be the least of her worries.

Tsunami sees Hana and Tsuna pulling themselves up from the dust and thinks of how much worse it could have been. How much worse it might be in the future. Tsunami thinks of a different Tsuna in a world where she isn't around, bullied for years and years over things he can't help. She thinks of _her_ Tsuna, small and easily startled and brave enough to stand up for his friends.

Under no circumstances can she be the reason that someone hurts him like that.

Tatsuzo's shoulders are level with her chest so Tsunami grabs the left in both hands (they're sweating so goddamn _much_ ) and drives her knee up once, twice, three times straight into his gut. He makes a horrible airless noise (what is she doing _what is she doing_ ) and his legs wobble and then buckle under him. She wrenches his shoulder to the side and he moves with the momentum in a rough tumble to the ground, curled up tight and wheezing deep, terrible breathes in and out and in and out.

Tsunami swallows. She forces her hands to still for just a moment. She has to be in control or this isn't going to work.

"You are not going to hurt me or my brother or my friends ever again," she begins, and if her voice is soft it is to mask the shaking. "You are not going to come after us, or that kid, or anyone, because if you do-"

Tsunami takes a slow breath in through her mouth. Just a little bit more, she's almost there. Tatsuzo is looking up at her with wide, wide eyes and she steels herself for one last push.

"If you do," she repeats, slow and measured. "I will hurt you _worse_."

It will be enough. It _has_ to be enough.

Then the dark-haired kid comes back with a teacher and things start to blur together into a whirlwind of stress as she is shuffled from one lecturing adult to another and another. Tsunami knows when she's fucked up and oh boy has she _fucked up_ , but she's done what needs to be done and regardless of the empty feeling in her stomach and the way she can't quite focus right she will not regret it. She will not let herself regret it. Sawada Tsunami is a girl of many talents, including but not limited to inopportune bouts of anxiety, self-delusion, and blatant denial. She is good at convincing herself of things.

Even so, she keeps her eyes firmly on her feet through the scoldings and the lectures and the punishments. Hana has been shuffled off to another teacher to give her side of the story. Tsuna keeps touching her arm but it's different, more hesitant than it used to be. Even when Nana is called in to pick her up, Tsunami doesn't do much more than shrug and nod when prompted.

It's… this is too much. This is too much for her handle and if she looks anyone in the eye, if she sees the disappointment-anger-fear reflected back at her then everything is going to become way too real. She hasn't cried once since her second life began she's isn't going to start _now_ of all times. She's not.

The hollow feeling inside her persists.

* * *

 **AN: ayy lmao**

" **BUT EVI, WHY DID THIS CHAPTER TAKE YOU SO LONG?/?"**

 **Let it be known that I'm the single most insecure bean on the planet and it sometimes takes me a while to stop draping myself dramatically over pianos bemoaning my lack of story-telling ability. Shout-out to all my lovely reviewers, followers, and favorite-ers. It was a long fight but you did it. You kicked my ass into writing. Proud of y'all.**

 **Feel free to hit up my tumblr, witty-name-goes-here. Do I frequently post about this fic? I would if you asked me to.**

 **Special thanks to HeirofChairs, who once physically mailed me a four inch tall figurine of Harry Styles wearing a hand-knit beanie with neither prompting nor discernible reason. He watches me from the bookshelf, quiet and proud.**

 **Review at your own leisure and thank you for reading!**


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